


Hanged

by AsbestosMouth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 1775, Actual John Wilmot porn not included, Alternate Universe - Historical, English Restoration, F/M, Gratuitous Ramsay Included, Heavy on the Welshness, Jon is a dandy highwayman, M/M, More serious than I thought, Repressed Stannis is Best Stannis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:55:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6792124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsbestosMouth/pseuds/AsbestosMouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>London 1775. The Restoration of the monarchy under the Kingship of Robert I is a voluptuous, decadent age. There are few who battle the licentious behaviours, who fight for righteousness in a world filled with sex, gold, and vice. The notorious Gallant Gentleman, who never steals wedding rings and is known to enact righteous revenge upon those who deserve such treatment, terrorises the rich and unworthy. The Kingmaker decides that the highwayman must hang for his crimes; after all, Stannis Baratheon is the keeper of law in the teeming city, sitting in judgement over the wicked. But what of the thief and the man who harbours his secret, or the innocent thrust into avaricious society? The repressed iron of a man hardened by penury, or the man for which no experience is too shocking?</p><p>This is what happens when I listen to Adam and the Ants and watch <em>Horrible Histories</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, another historical AU from me? What a shock, I swear. One day I will dip my toe into true canon, but for now I shall explore the muddy waters of the lovely AU world. As you are aware, I am a fan of the Mouth Patented Historical Bit. They will be more about any references that I may mention, so to add context and sense of place. These, as ever, shall be at the end of each chapter.
> 
> Some videos that I think you must watch, since I blame them entirely - [Stand and Deliver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B2a6l6wM2k) by Adam and the Ants. [Dick Turpin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYU-vSh7ORA) is by the Horrible Histories lot, the brilliant CBBC history show in which they sing. Many. Things. [Charles II: King of Bling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5abHKvUBQ) is another one, sort of explaining the reign of Charles II. I think I have a little crush on Matt Baynton, who is the singer of both. 
> 
> By the way, this fic is nowhere near as jolly. Sorry. However, less depressing than _1644_ , so that's good.

* * *

 

 

_The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,_

_The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,_

_The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,_

_And the highwayman came riding -_

_Riding - riding -_

_The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door._

_(Alfred Noyes, 1906)_

 

* * *

 

Davos patiently waits. He is that sort of man.

 

Stoic.

 

Moonlight and calmness, and they will soon return to his warm hospitality once more. As a precaution the usual _accoutrements_ are laid out neatly and cleanly upon a white linen cloth, a bottle of good smuggled Jamaican rum upon the scrubbed table next to needles and scalpels. Most captains have some talent towards sewing up fabric and men, and Davos, even if he is now retired, now an innkeeper, maintains his skills. Salladhor and his sons bring plenty of the sugar cane alcohol from the Indies, supplying many along the grim muck of the lower Thames, below the bridge, where mudlarks scavenge for nothing in the dirt and quiet rowing boats slip unnoticed amongst vast hulks and brigantines. The contraband smuggled westwards, along inlets and rivers, upon horseback or oxen waggons, feeds half of the public taverns in Southwark, including Davos’ hard-won establishment situated within the green-y outskirts. Marsh-sodden and forsaken, St. George’s Fields wants to suck the little wood-framed inn back to the primordial ooze, but Davos, proud and hardworking and damned if any swamp will claim his lively-hood, battles endlessly against the creep of mildew and rot.

 

Hoofbeats, muffled by soil and dampness. He listens for a long moment, nods, turns to pour a tankard of his home brewed dark porter for the rider.

 

“Evening, lad.”

 

“Evening, ser.” The boy, and he is little more than a youth, lean and small and dark-eyed, silently slips through the heavy oaken door and settles upon a stool by the welcoming fire. The ale placed upon the hearth, Davos takes to cutting bread and cheese, letting the other warm from the early winter chill that turns reeds to shards and threatens the Thames to freezing.

 

“Good night?”

 

A smile, as wary and solemn as one from a man three decades older, and the rider places a hessian sack upon the rush-strewn floor.

 

“My lady Tyrell-”

 

“The young ‘un, or the battleaxe?”

 

A gleam of teeth. “The elderly lady, ser. She proved most congenial after persuasion.”

 

He crouches to examine, knees protesting. A pair of diamond earbobs; they need breaking down to jewel and setting, far easier to fence that way. A sparkling matching ring. The elegantly embroidered evening bag of the upper class female, silken and tempting, containing several shining golden guineas. No wedding ring, of course; Jon never takes that particular bauble. It earns him romantic nicknames from lovestruck young women who find tales of a dashing highwayman thrilling and dangerous in turn, and a bitter loathing from the broadsheets and the Baratheon hierarchy

 

“Well done, lad. I’ll get you a goodly amount of coin for these.”

 

Jon flushes a little pink about his cheekbones, before removing his gloves. A good boy, is young Snow. A strange sort of honour drives him to careful larceny, understanding robbery. He steals only from those who can afford to lose such trinkets, or from the truly wicked; Davos respects the youth for that self-discipline. Too many times has he closed the eyes of a dead man, bled out over the table and the beaten earth floor, for aiming too high, too desperately. Over-reaching. Gold, the glimmer of wealth and power, can ruin a man with a pistol to the gut, a blunderbuss to the head, a dagger to the back. Jon, sensible boy, understands.

 

“Eat, and then get yourself to bed. Church in the morning, confess your sins.”

 

“Yes, ser.”

 

He touches the dark-clad shoulder, a lingering roll of his thumb and a squeeze.

 

Jon nestles into the caress, comforted.

 

* * *

 

“A good sermon, rector, a fine one indeed for such a morning.” Quick. Davos appreciates that. Too bloody cold to sit in a draughty and sinking church and listen to endless rhetoric.

 

“I find that reflecting upon the beauty of our Lord’s creation quite warming this time of year, even as the snows threaten. Most chill, Mr. Seaworth. Most chill indeed. They say that the Thames will once more freeze this year, and we shall have another Frost Fair upon the river. Such a bitter hundred years there never was, they say.” The reverend, as thin and raw-boned as a race horse, silver hair brushed haphazardly, jiggles lightly upon his toes.

 

“I remember the one the year we lost the King; just nineteen I was then, and I saw the Regicides drawn by sledges over the ice.”

 

“God save His Majesty,” Reverend Sparrow adds, mildly, and Davos mouths his agreement. “Your young ward is growing to be a fine young man, Mr. Seaworth.”

 

“He is a good lad.”

 

“He could be an excellent verger.”

 

The two men have talked of this before, since Jon was a small boy and Davos found him upon his doorstep one mild March afternoon, lost and confused and surprisingly self-controlled for a six year old child. Reverend Sparrow sees a devout, pious young man, with a healthy regard for the Gods. Davos knows Jon’s other side; a certain disregarding of rules where honour rises above the law. Passion. Inner torment. Sometimes Jon comes home, later and bloodier, and sits and stares into the fire until Davos can gently soothe his demons with practicality and common sense, with an arm about his shuddering shoulders or a kiss to his forehead. They huddle then, as the flames turn to ash, and tales pour from the young man’s lips of deaths, or maiming, and always the ones who are hurt deserve their pain. A man in a carriage with a sobbing young girl who he insists on attempting to take forcibly - found with a broken neck. One who treats his servants as slaves, whipping to the bone - slashed across the face and chest. A woman, cruel and elegant, who lies and blackmails good persons for their gold - frightened beyond her small and nasty wits.

 

Jon avenges and protects the little folk who cannot avenge or protect themselves. It tortures the poor boy, and Davos carefully puts him back together every time with an almost fatherly concern and gentle, tender, care.

 

They prefer not to dwell, even if sometimes late into the night he hears Jon’s fervent prayers begging for forgiveness. Guilt leads to church, and Sunday mornings in uncomfortable pews, but if it gives the lad a sense of closure then Davos, who is a pragmatic man who does not believe in any Gods apart from the certainty of death and life, encourages.

 

“You have a verger, rector.”

 

Sam is round-faced and florid, less shy than he once was. Whilst Reverend Sparrow is the face of holiness, and there are none in the city as devoutly dedicated as the man - they say if he were richer he would make Bishop one day - Tarly is silent and invisible and keeps Christ Church functioning. He blushes near women, and sometimes comes to the inn with a few coins to drink a single mug of strong ale that sends him tipsy and smiling as sweet as any girl. An amiable boy, even if pushed into the ecclesiastical life by his stern hatchet of a father, who finds he blossoms with order, organisation, and the peaceful echo of the vaulted wooden roof. He and Jon chatter animatedly, laughing softly, Sam’s hands speaking as much as his throat.

 

“Ah, but Jon-”

 

He shakes his head, amused. “Jon is the sort who, if you took him as verger, would accidentally become Archbishop. I do not wish to inflict that upon any congregation, let alone a country, rector.”

 

Jon is a force of nature, even if he does not realise this. He is the sort of man who others would die for, would kill for, and Davos reflects that it is indeed lucky the lad does not realise the power that charisma and dark eyes in a pretty face can wield. Sometimes, in the nightly quietude, with the curly head resting companionably upon his shoulder, Davos feels himself edging towards something only Salladhor understands, something charred and nonsensical.

 

And Sal? Sal would laugh.

 

It is lonely, sometimes, without a wife, without his sons. Jon makes his life a little more bearable.

 

* * *

 

“My lord-”

 

Stannis Baratheon, Judge, Privy Councillor, brother to the King, Lord of the ancient Welsh estate of Carreg Y Ddraig, peers balefully over the rims of his spectacles. The messenger before him, a well-built boy with Robert’s infernal blue eyes, still retains his blacksmithing brawn even if the father decided that a son would be more useful at court than pounding metal. Since the Restoration - oh, the public adored their charming new king who they did not have to see drunk, or trying to seduce the wives of other men often successfully, a man who prefered sports and larks and games to ruling the damned country - Robert decided to gather his misbegotten children and reward them just for living. The aristocratic bastards have titles, are lords and ladies in their own right. Ones like Gendry Waters, children of low birth and low expectations, are kept as messengers, pages. Nearby, watched.

 

He finds the entire situation highly distasteful.

 

“Waters?”

 

“My lord, there has been another incident.”

 

“The same man?” The urge descends, without registering, and Stannis wonders how long he has been grinding his teeth this time. His jaw aches, and he considers taking a swig of the opium tincture that his physician, Sydenham, presses upon him for relaxation, to encourage this insomniac to finally sleep, but the grogginess the laudanum offers is nothing he cares for. A man must be strong enough to break the chains that bind him.

 

“Yes, my lord. The one the ‘papers call the Gallant Gentleman.”

 

“Who has he upset this time?”

 

The boy squares his not inconsiderable shoulders, eyes fixed on the wallpaper just above Stannis’ head. Of all of the bastards he is the one with enough gumption to deal with Baratheon tempers. If he were born of the Queen, Gendry would make an excellent king. Broad enough back to carry the woes of an entire country. Instead, of course, hateful Joffrey, strange and vicious and golden perfection, is next in line.

 

“Lady Olenna Tyrell, my lord. In Hyde Park. He did not take her wedding ring, so we are sure it must be the same gentleman who is behind the other robberies.” Of all the people to be targeted, it has to be the Queen of Thorns. Soon the harpy will petition Robert, and since Robert is terrified of the tiny, angry old woman, will coddle her and promise that Stannis will deal with capturing the thief. Robert delegates impressively; he does nothing but drink and prowl for women whilst his brother slaves constantly and rectifies mistakes the King cheerfully makes.

 

“Why must we be plagued by a supposed hero, Waters? Damn the public, damn them all - a man who refuses to steal wedding rings should not be held in such high esteem by the populace! Ballads, Waters. I have heard tales of ballads being sung from Cheapside to Westminster that celebrate his so-called achievements. Idiotic young women wish to kiss him because they are so convinced he must be dashing and handsome in spades.” He folds his hands together, knuckles white, neck complaining of tension. The Gallant Gentleman, upon his plain-headed bay mare, the scourge of Hyde Park. So often has he sent armed men to deal with the miscreant, and Stannis wishes nothing more to see the plague of a rogue hanged at Tyburn, but his soldiers never find the culprit. He seems as if he is made from darkness itself, avoiding and melding into the night. Helped, obviously, by the smallfolk. The commoners must protect their Gods, after all.

 

He pauses. Thoughts swim, of black-clad men and carriages, of strong-bolted chests of gold and-

 

“I have a thought, Waters. I presume you are more than capable at finding a criminal underworld, considering you were dragged up in one?”

 

The words sting, but Gendry does not flinch. He is used to the Baratheon mercurial moods, though Stannis usually remains consumed with irritation, snappish. A steady state can be dealt with; there is nothing more intimidating than Stannis Baratheon in a mood where he shows some other emotion than ill-concealed contemptible ire. The corner of his mouth tugs into an unwilling sneering curl. Smiles like this usually precede something explosive.

 

“Yes, my lord.”

 

“Then you must spread the word, and quietly, boy, of a well-laden carriage being driven from  Martell’s masqued party that will cross Hyde Park. Guests dripping in jewels, great purses of gold, all drunk and dazed with the splendor of that dilettante’s vice and excess. Embroider carefully, do not make it unbelievable. Allow this to pass to the correct ears. If you do this, I shall ask your father’s permission to promote you to a more deserving and pleasing position.”

 

“Could I work with metal again, my lord? They always look for men at the armouries.” Of course Gendry, talented in his smithing and at once with the process, wishes to return to where he feels most comfortable. The move would be a promotion, yes; from shoeing horses and mending cooking pots to casting mighty cannon and hammering armour.

 

“I make no promises, Waters, but I shall approach the king with your petition if you are successful.”

 

The young man beams, bright and handsome and every inch his father in Robert’s dizzying, frantic youth. Stannis hates them both, but he is aware of his foibles. To loathe the son because of the father shows a weakness of character that he despises. It is not Gendry’s fault that his brother stuck his cock into his mother and created a life. He finds it difficult, however, to shake the judgement of what Waters is; nothing but another royal bastard, a stain, an admission of Robert’s whoring and lack of control. The youth is, by no fault of his own, an embarrassment.

 

“Thank you, my lord.”

 

Gendry Waters does have one advantage. He is not Joffrey Baratheon, and, for his uncle, this is a mercy.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit:**
> 
>  
> 
> _Christ Church, Southwark:_ the original church was built in 1771, and by 1738 had fallen in to the marshes. The next building upon the site survived until the Blitz and was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in 1941. The present church, a modern construction, dates from 1958. It is part of the Anglican diocese of Southwark.
> 
> _Frost Fairs:_ the Thames froze ten times during the 17th century, the most of any century, and in the height of the Little Ice Age (1300-1870). The Thames was, until the mid 19th century and the Bazalgette Embankment building, much wider, slower, and therefore froze more easily. The Regicides that Davos references would have sledded upon the frozen river in 1649. Entertainment was laid on, and shops often moved their wares to the river during the freeze; there are reports of bullaiting during the 1683-4 fair.
> 
> _Sydenham:_ Stannis' physician, Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) was the court doctor to Charles II. His magnum opus, _Observationes Medicae_ , was used as a textbook for several hundred years and earned him the title of 'The English Hippocrates.' He is credited with popularising laudanum in England: his recipe for this was made from opium, saffron, cloves, cinnamon, and a lot of sherry. His seminal work of 1676 advocated the use of the drug in acute diseases.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 

“Scandalous,” purrs the woman in the velvet mask replete with the whiskers and ears of a cat. “You are thoroughly scandalous, Oberyn, and you are thrilled with us all knowing. How you have managed to get such poetry published, I can scarce imagine!”

 

Martell smirks faintly, the expression not quite reaching his clever brown eyes. This woman bores him. He made love with her a summer before, and yet she flirts and pouts and fans with ostrich feathers, and throws herself hopefully, but what fun is to be had with an over- willing conquest? Much more exciting the seduction, the stalking. Finding prey, setting to with determination, the claiming his prize of kisses and _ la petit mort _ , and then on to another who does not know they need Lord Rochester in their beds. Ah, they soon fall so beautifully and gracefully to his lusts.

 

“You must-”

 

“Madame,” and he bows more elegantly louche than any man within the dizzily champagne-sodden ballroom, all reds and bronze and the colours of his family crest. “I must speak with my other guests.”

 

“Oh-”

 

A kiss to her fingers appeases, brings giggles and fluttering lashes, and he stalks from her blushing figure with a cool relief. Women tend to cling, hopeful of being the one to tame Oberyn Martell. 

 

Masks, upon all. They are not to hide; no, to flatter, to intrigue. To hide a pockmark, or enhance precious beauty. Beguiling. Martell knows many through intimate encounters; the creamy swell of a breast. The length of a breech-clad thigh. Gestures, or voices, or the delicate curve of a cheek under black fabric. He bows, and smiles, and flows amongst his guests like water across a pebbled stream bed. Eddies beg him to talk, or rivulets swirling and chattering hopefully, but he never is dissuaded from the path he takes.

 

The man who sits upon an embroidered high-backed chair, sipping neatly from a fluted glass, brings him pause. Martell rakes through his knowledge of the peerage, and comes to a startling realisation; the person watching the dancing, orderly and serious and unassuming, is someone he does not know. It intrigues him. The face, or what he sees, is a little pale, rather slender, splendid high-carved cheekbones striking, and the suggestion of freckles across the aquiline nose is quite charming.

 

A young woman, busty and frothy and splendid in rich rose satin, whirls up to the man, dragging a beautiful languid youth by the hand. Brother and sister; Tyrells. He has had both of them, though never at the same time. Even Martell could not deal with them both in his bed.

 

“Come on, you must try and dance,” hiccups Margaery. Her breasts shiver with her voice. She throws herself into the chair next to the serious faced and quiet man, fingers tugging at his arm. “Use the cane, no one will care. Perhaps the sarabande? That is stately enough for you, isn’t it?”

 

“Boring, you mean!” Loras snickers, and the serious faced man seems to retreat, just a little. Wary, like prey. Martell watches, quietly. “Oh come on, you cannot sit here all evening and ignore the dancing. And if you must, because you are just so awful, then go and play cards, or the piano, or if you must, take some air upon the balcony. Stop sitting there like a wet Monday in March and have some damned fun!”

 

“Even Garlan is dancing,” Margaery interjects. “He hates dancing, yet he is partnering Jeyne and I think they may end up wed. She has always wished for a match with a soldier. You are supposedly here to try and find a prospective bride, and how can any lady look at you as you sit and mope-”

 

Martell has enough. He is a kind man, beneath the hardened libertine layer that sets him glossy and wanton.

 

“I do not think I have had the pleasure,” he murmurs, allowing his voice to curl with a warm familiarity that brings the girl up quite short and sends her lissom brother to blushing. Close to, the serious man is younger than he imagines, and possesses a wide-eyed quality that is rather intriguing. Not a handsome man, this quiet one, but there are more special traits than beauty to behold. He dresses perhaps unfashionably, and wears riding boots rather than dancing slippers, and seems rather of the country. If Martell kisses him, slides his own long tanned fingers into the unremarkably wavy hair, the man may taste of sunshine, mown hay, and sweet well water.

 

“Oh, Oberyn,” and it is Loras who gives him a heated gaze. “This is our frightfully proper brother, Willas. He will not dance, and I will not have it.”

 

“Loras, please. I cannot dance.” He has a surprisingly low voice, inflected with a charming Welshness that seems so very out of place in London. His siblings are pure aristocracy; this soft-eyed man a country squire to their sophistication. A person could fall in love with such a rich vocal. However average the rest of the man - and he is just a brown-haired, pale-skinned Welshman lacking city wiles, albeit possessing such cheekbones - that voice is something truly beautiful. Martell wonders, curiously, what sounds would come from that throat during love-making. 

 

He will find out. He always does. Such a sweet chase this will be, such a fascinating quarry.

 

Martell loves tasting innocence after losing his own so many years before.

 

“You do not have to dance, Mr. Tyrell. This is my party, dear boy. You do not have to do anything you do not wish.”

 

“I would, I really would.” He still seems trapped, eyes darting from Oberyn to Loras who he seems a little nervous of, then pleadingly to Margaery. “It. It still hurts, Loras.”

 

“It has been six months, and I know you are milking it,” the brother replies with a dripping flippancy that makes Martell dislike the other quite intensely, even if he is beautiful, before Loras wrenches Willas from the chair with a triumphant cackle.

 

Mr. Tyrell whines through his nose, panicking; his left leg buckles, helplessly under his bodyweight, and Martell catches him before he collapses white-grey with pain and breathing ragged. He is slender, surprisingly so, his coat too large for a delicate frailty under the glossy expensive fabric. Oberyn lets the other take a moment, as Willas struggles and bites at his lip to control his agony, hands fists upon his host’s claret-wine jacket. When he is finally in control, the greyness fading to a dull ashen, he guides the man to a chair and orders him drink more champagne.

 

There is blood upon Mr. Tyrell’s hands, half-crescent wounds where nails bit skin. Margaery, apologetic and horrified and stammering her sorries, pulls her fine worked handkerchief from her bodice and bundles it into Willas’ trembling fingers. 

 

Oberyn represses the urge to lick the flesh clean, to become intimate with the caress of a tongue.

 

And then Mr. Tyrell apologises, low and resigned. He looks at his sensitive artist hands as he does, and the handkerchief turns ruddy. Another apology before Margaery is hugging him, promising that Loras will die a truly horrid death, swearing she will sit with Willas and entertain him, bring him some cake as he adores sweetmeats and sugared fancies, gossip about the dancers and help her brother learn names and titles.

 

The smile, when it comes and so unwillingly it seems, is muted and soft. In that moment the plain man is quite lovely.

 

He wants this quiet man with the glorious voice. He wants to hear that baritone sing, pleasured and undone. He wants to possess the innocence. Tear it. Make it his.

 

* * *

 

“Willas Tyrell, Oberyn?” Renly straddles the balustrade, eyes half-closed with champagne and amusement. “I think even you overreach this time, I think you shall lose that challenge. I could understand targeting the younger brother-”

 

“I have had him.”

 

“Haven’t we all?” Unlike the other Baratheon in attendance - Stannis who is grim and fascinatingly hewn from granite, incorruptible and an idle fantasy that can never be fulfilled - Renly is unashamed of his good looks and cheerful countenance, his tastes that run strictly towards beautiful men. They once spent an amusing fortnight at young Baratheon’s estates in Kent, thoroughly debauched and cider-heady. These days they merely compare notes after conquests. “I might have to have him again. Such enthusiasm.”

 

“I rather think he is fond of you. He watches you like a parched serpent watches a waterfall.”

 

“Perhaps I shall woo him with your filthy poetry?”

 

“Too many cunts,” he murmurs, and both men grin broadly.

 

“In all seriousness, Oberyn, why devote yourself to chasing Willas Tyrell? There are more far more handsome persons of either sex to take.” Renly never understands; he does not chase, he lets others come to him. Instant gratification. Sex. There is no wooing, or charming conversation, no soft kisses of seduction. For Baratheon the outcome, the orgasm, is to be grasped swiftly, hastily. Too long spent searching for pleasure is a waste. For Martell? The anticipation is something to be savoured. He courts and flatters, kisses fingertips, sends thoughtful and elegant gifts. Writes charming letters in a hand that turns to depraved perverted poetry for money to fund his lavish lifestyle, or to amuse King Robert with rapier-witted ditties.

 

“He is quite fascinating.” He could describe that voice, and Martell, the poet and wordsmith and the finest literary mind of his generation, thinks he may not have the vocabulary to describe that earthy, sweet-tinted Welshness. “Unspoiled.”

 

“Boring. You only want him because you have fucked everyone else.”

 

“You sound like your catamite, dear boy. Loras is evil.”

 

“But the arse on that man.” Renly laughs, deep, unrestrained. Oberyn knew Robert as a youth; he sees a perfect copy of the King before him, blue-eyed and broad in the shoulder. “I can forgive many sins for an arse like that. I shall bet you fifty guineas and my finest hound that you will not have Willas Tyrell.”

 

Oberyn Martell is a gambling man. They have wagered before. He takes Renly’s hand and shakes.

 

* * *

 

Stannis eschews champagne.

 

He rarely drinks socially. At his estates in Monmouthshire he partakes of the clear good waters of the wellsprings below the crenellated manor house. Cold and fresh and filtered through ancient rocks, the liquid is more life-giving than alcohol. Sometimes, alone and suspicious, he bathes his face in the trickling icy stream and prays to the Gods for redemption. He is a hard, bitter man. He has need to be; if Stannis were not the man he is, then the Restoration would have failed fifteen years previously, and they would still be living as penniless exiles in some hostile foreign court.

 

The Baratheon who recreated the crown is not Robert. He is a mere figurehead, albeit one who loses his gilt shine year upon year. Stannis, overly-worked and under-appreciated by those who matter, those who should be thankful for his sacrifices, is the Kingmaker.

 

He thinks, sometimes, of how easy it could be to bring the entire deck of cards a-tumbling. Many embers could blaze with a thrust of a poker. Religion, and poverty. Those men who still hark to the days of the Republic. Angry Frenchmen, upset at the domestic marriage of Robert when Louis offered his sister as Queen. He met the woman, once; as pretty and delicate as a seashell. Robert would have broken her. She would not have coped with his philandering and drunkenness. He did not wish Cersei upon any man, apart from Robert.

 

Let him be faced with an unhappy, devious marriage. Let him suffer as Stannis suffered in his arranged betrothal to Selyse. One child, a dear daughter who the man loves as much as he can love any other - coldly, and clinically, and lacking understanding because he has never had a role model to demonstrate how to love, how to be a father - and his frail wife died in childbed.

 

Oberyn Martell, who is nothing but a pornographer, leans against the wall next to him. Stannis dislikes Rochester. The good lord represents licentiousness, debauchery, sin. Everything he battles against in this supposed golden age of royalty, everything that sends his teeth aching with contempt.

 

“My lord of Dragonstone. Do not ask me to pronounce the barbarity in Welsh.” 

 

“Martell.”

 

“Shall I ask a servant to have you brought some fruit punch?”

 

“No.”

 

He feels the clever eyes assessing, sliding. Being looked at by Martell is almost like being stripped naked and examined in intimate, devastating, detail. The silence is cloying, deafening, and seems to last for generations.

 

“Is this where we talk of the weather, you grunt your replies, say you simply must return to work, and then take your leave?” Teasing and light and playful. He hates the handsome man with the dissipated bronze stare and the elegant dress of a fop. He loathes that Martell is a true baroque gentleman; poet, writer, scientist, soldier. Oberyn Martell is everything disgusting about England. He is filth. To others, the worldly dregs that worship at the feet of depravity, Lord Rochester is a hero. “Or would you join me for a drink, ser? I promise I shall not get you drunk and then seduce you in the arbor.”

 

Stannis, bristling, strides away, jaw working and tension radiating from his black-coated back. They all mock him with their arch words, their beautiful manners. They can hold conversations, make themselves seem interested in nonsense, in fluff and nothing. All pretty words, and no substance. Here Stannis cannot find conversation that taxes, or educates, or even captures his limited imagination; no one wishes to hear of the intricacies of thief taking, or how to correctly utilise arable land when faced with rocky soils, or how the law must apply to all - rich and poor. He is too intense, too quietly zealous. Stannis is perfectly aware that he makes others uncomfortable.

 

He does not see Martell tilt his head with a piqued suspicion, consider for a long moment, and then murmur something to one of the serving boys.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit:**
> 
> _Lord Rochester:_ John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was a famously debauched poet, satirist, and writer of the English Restoration period. He died aged 33 of venereal disease. He may be familiar because of the film _The Libertine_ starring Johnny Depp. His writings are, quite often obscene and were heavily censored during the Victorian era; they were mostly published posthumously, even though Wilmot wished them to be destroyed. I cunningly borrowed him for this as I considered Oberyn, a man of letters and a hedonist himself, may pen the odd obscene ditty.
> 
> _Sarabande:_ During the late 17th century, dancing was highly ritualised. The French Noble style, encompassing the Baroque period, is possibly considered the precursor to modern ballet. Sarabande is one of the suite of dances performed at the French and then English courts during the period. It originated in the Spanish colonies of Central America, was first mentioned in 1539, before being brought back to the Old World. _Zarabanda_ was actually banned in Spain for being indecent, but was transplanted to Italy, the court of Louis XIV of France, and then to England. It is a slow, stately dance in triple metre, possessing much toe pointing and elegant arm movements. There is no way Willas could have danced this with his gammy knee. Damn you, evil siblings.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

Jon finishes his pint, wiping his mouth carefully upon his sleeve. He wears his usual faded blacks, his untidy curling hair pulled back into a short tail, a scarf at his throat and a hat upon his head. Always, Davos thinks, as he kisses his forehead, the lad looks too young, too innocent for this. Perhaps that is what keeps him safe? They look for a hardened criminal, but their thief is fresh-faced and pretty, far too youthful.

 

“Be safe.”

 

“I promise.”

 

They embrace, and Jon tucks his head into the crook of Davos’ sturdy shoulder. Sometimes it feels as if he is losing a child to war, or a husband - and he laughs softly with that, for are not most innkeepers and brewers still women? - to a dawning and frightening moment that could break them apart in an instant. He pauses, touching dark curls with a shortened finger, watching the lock spring with the lightest of tugs.

 

“If it feels wrong, Jon, you must come away.”

 

“I promise, Davos.” Others, like his true sons, laugh at the fussing. Jon, though. Jon takes, absorbs. His promises are bound by his honour, his self-contained decency. Others consider him sullen, but that is just the way of a quiet young man who always watches. 

 

“Just come home.”

 

A shift of their bodies, a tightening of arms, a brush of full lips to his bearded jaw, and then Jon is astride his plain bay mare and cantering through the marshy swampland towards Southwark, the bridge, and Hyde Park. Lord Rochester is infamous for his masques. Fresh, easily taken pickings, from the hands of drunks and the star-struck, laden with coin won through gambling and cards, or the finest of heirloom jewels. 

 

Davos watches, arms wrapped about his middle, until horse and rider are swallowed by the night. Overhead the moon, pregnant, sends silver across the stable yard, turning the man to pewter.

 

* * *

 

He lays out the kits, the needles, the good rum, and settles to wait.

 

Finally. Hoofbeats, and he pauses to listen. The canter, a thrice of steps like a sarabande, is hurried, and rushing, and cold twists into his chest like a dagger, razored and hideous.

 

This is not Jon.

 

He expects no one other than his ward, his almost son, who he dreams of guiltily when the loneliness grows too thick, too endless. Davos stands, hand braced upon the scrubbed table, before the heavy door is shoved open by a flamboyantly dressed man who wears smudged kohl about his eyes.

 

“Sal?”

 

“Where is Jon?”

 

“Gone north.”

 

“Fuck. You need to go.” Sal is his closest ally, his smuggling brother, his one-time lover. Davos proved too sensible, Saan too fey and wanton to settle, but they retain the closeness between them. He shines gaudily, yellow-coated, russet feathers in his cap, the inn small and dark and nothing around the splendor of the man. Davos entrusted his sons, his boat, his livelihood to Salladhor. Everything precious in his world, and Sal - amusing, iron-willed, damned - knows the pricelessness attributed to everything Seaworth loves. “Take my horse, and your pistols, and get to Jon.”

 

He finds the old flintlock duo beneath a wooden bench, cleaned and oiled. The knowledge of how to prepare the weapons comes naturally, still ingrained upon a Captain’s heart. Slower, yes, because his fingers and dreading nerves make him fumble and spill the powder, but Davos mechanically loads each gun, sliding them into his belt. 

 

There is no question of not going to Jon. Perhaps another man, less soft-hearted, less loyal, could have turned their back upon a boy to save their own hide. Many did. The underworld is cut-throat and vicious, and often devours its own. Davos. Davos is, for his sins, a good man. He is the sort of person who holds himself still when his fingertips are messily removed with a blunt knife to punish his smuggling; he deserves his fate. Each time he flexes his hand, he sees blue Baratheon eyes in the face of a boy two years from majority, a nineteen year old lad he brought across the Channel after the death of the Lord Protector to petition for the return of the monarchy. Such graveness, and determination, and flinty resolve, even as he removed the top joint of his fingers.

 

Stannis Baratheon can inspire loyalty in a man, even if that man bled for him. That was why Davos, Royalist to the core, smuggled him to London, using the old routes; took him through the melting confusion and straight to the heart of government, even as his stumps bled into the scraps of bandage. He told Salladhor, after the Restoration, and his friend commented that it sounded as if he were still half-obsessed the young man. Perhaps, at some level, this is a truth; he has never met anyone before or since driven by such rigid righteous passion. Sometimes, idly, he wonders of Stannis Baratheon and the man he became. He has a reputation for inflexibility, and ruthlessness; he sends men to the gallows with a nod of his cruel head. A child that lacks compassion will grow to be a compassionless man.

 

“Tell me what is happening.”

 

Sal lays warm dark fingers upon Davos’ neck.

 

“One of the mudlarks heard from one of the watermen, who is the father to one of the Martell pages, that there is to be an arrest this night, Davos. You must go and bring him home.”

 

* * *

 

Hyde Park is dark and full of terrors. 

 

Jon waits, quiet in a knot of scrub and lightly pollarded beech. He is used to long hours spent in the saddle, silent and motionless. The cold drives him to wrap his cloak tighter about his slim frame, warm his chilled hands upon his mare’s thick-muscled neck as she twitches. Sometimes he wonders whether he should be a verger, or take to the priesthood; leave the darkness and move towards the light. Davos brings him back to sensibility with kind words and those fatherly caresses, makes him understand that it only seems that grass is greener in pastures new. Sometimes Jon wonders if he should kiss his mentor, curl into the narrow bed and cling so close. Make love. Bury his face into the man’s broadly furred tattooed chest, and accept his own self. Davos is not handsome, but he is dependable, and loving, and good. He listens, and holds Jon when the guilt grows overly sharp, and indulges the youth’s religious fervour. He is humour, and decency.

 

Davos is lonely. Just as Jon is lonely.

 

Isolation gapes, and makes a man think strangeness. If there were others, if Sal remained and the Seaworth lads visited more than when their feet find London’s clay-loam, or if Davos took another wife, or Jon a sweetheart, the strangeness between them would not exist. They would be as father and son. Without all of that, he has only Davos, who provides the solid and loving presence that anchors the young man in some sense of place.

 

Their relationship, as it is, is a confusing writhing mass of something that cannot be understood, not even by Jon himself.

 

He breathes out, steam startling from his lips.

 

Hooves, the low clatter of wheels. Iron on damp frozen earth, and leather traces. 

 

A pat to the mare’s neck, a shiver of her withers, and then they pace forward, just enough.

 

The carriage is fine, drawn by a handsome pair of high-stepping greys that he does not recognise. In the thickened milken moonlight they seem beaten from silver. Jon looks to the starred sky, murmurs a prayer to the gods he believes in utterly and unquestioningly, and spurs the mare into a flat, directed canter.

* * *

 

Davos rides very ill indeed, but this night he does not care. His hands matt into the horse’s mane, and thank Salladhor that he rides a well-tempered beast. Smugglers are not the most natural upon horseback. 

 

Across the bridge, he turns west. Streets fly, sparks from the horse’s shoes skitter upon cobbles. Luckily the ice has not yet descended this evening, still a little early for the depths of the night. He is aware that the horse labours, sweating heavily and white-foamed under the reins and saddle cloths. Unused to being ridden hard, it remains gallant, pounding forward even as the breath scythes through the lungs. All Davos hears is blood in his head, and the snorting of his mount.

 

Time seems to be meaningless in the thudding of hooves and the raging of his mind.

 

Another turn, and he rides upon instinct now, raw in the thigh and hand and unaware of his physical torment. The ruins of the city pass him, the rebuilding taking so very long after the Fire, and he is out onto parkland and common, heels drumming and urging. Overhead the moon seems stark and unforgiving, threatening, and Davos aims towards the King’s Road through the park.

 

A carriage is stopped, two handsome greys shaking their heads and pawing impatiently.

 

He sees Jon.

 

Something in his chest squeezes, tears, and he flings himself from his horse, staggering towards where the boy is held at gunpoint, a blunderbuss to his temple.

 

Even now Davos will not abandon a loved one. He never will. Even that dooms him for all eternity.

 

* * *

 

“M’lord.” The scarred soldier always speaks so roughly. “Another one of the fuckers.”

 

Clegane has a way with words that slices through any courtly elegance, and Stannis is quite thankful for him. Sandor is brutal and utterly loyal to the Crown, a Baratheon follower without question, though Robert wishes for the man to guard Joffrey. It is, of course, not mentioned that the request is to protect others from the brattish and vicious child; there have been quiet complaints from brothel madames thoroughly shaken at the damage to girls returned to their care.

 

The boy watches him with wary dark eyes. He is young, ridiculously so, sixteen if a day, only a few years younger than when Stannis returned the monarchy. Such contrast between then, even if this child will be hanged as an adult; the law is above all, all must suffer. Stannis was never pretty and winsome like this young man with his soft mouth and expressive pale face. At sixteen he suffered and starved and lived in poverty amongst the splendor of the European courts that harboured the would-be King. At sixteen Stannis Baratheon was a man, a hard, self-controlled man.

 

“Let him approach.”

 

“No!” The boy snarls, husky and desperate. Stannis turns back silently then strikes him across the face with a strong, hard hand that sends the dark curls spilling, knocks the hat clean from his head. To his credit the highwayman does not flinch, just licks the stinging corner of his lips with a pointed tongue

 

“Let me through. Gods, Jon. Let me pass, damn you!” A common voice, south of the river, warm and thick and heady like a mead or a good wheat beer. Whoever the man is, he pushes past Stannis, knocks the blunderbuss away with a raw-palmed hand, drags the boy into a tight embrace. “I could not get here, I tried, Jon. I tried. I am so sorry, my lad. I am so so sorry.”

 

Stannis watches them, emotionless. A father, he supposes, looking out for his wayward son.

 

“You must go.” They talk quietly now, softly, eyes locked. 

 

“Did he hurt you?” A thumb lingers at the pretty mouth, bruising blossoming soft and black. “Your face-”

 

“Had worse. You have to go.”

 

“I’m not leaving you, I’ll go with you.”

 

“Davos, please-?”

 

The name sparks, lightning in the desert before the rains obliterate; something ancient and half-remembered from a lifetime previously observed.

 

“No,” and there is a finality there, a settling, and he cradles the young man against his chest, mutilated fingers sliding through tangled dark hair, before they are kissing, softly, desperately. Someone whimpers. Eyes close, bodies meld so the young highwayman is against the carriage, gloved hands sliding down this Davos’ sturdy torso to cradle his backside. A solid thigh insinuates between Jon’s long legs, and the older man takes control with a loving, almost careful regard. 

 

Stannis swallows, a dull heady anger building deep in his belly.

 

He cannot look away. Something primal forces him to watch the passionate embrace, teeth upon white skin, the faintest curve of spines and hips and roiling. Stannis does not understand, not fully, and that drives him to a distracted state of irritable fury, flush dull upon his cheeks, head pounding. He is above human emotion; he is a man driven by logic, and principle, not lust and shame and hunger. To devour the mouth of another, to commit such lechery in a public place, and between two men. And yet? There is an artistry, a beauty in such sin. The Devil, he supposes, tempted Christ in the wilderness. Here, the Lord of Darkness teases him with reminders, snatches of helpless longing in a youth cut short by deprivation and tamped down like tobacco in a clay pipe. A childhood of penury and debt, humiliation and suffering, made more cutting through his own perverse hunger. Those fantasies of that thoroughly unsuitable man have haunted his dreams for decades, salt and sea and smuggling, and send him churning with lust and sick horror. Can a person be punished too greatly for his desires? He has forced himself to chasteness, and his sham of a marriage, and yet-

 

Martell would adore such show.

 

Stannis twitches. To think of how Oberyn and Renly flaunt themselves, so open and uncaring and confident in their lechery. To even look upon their laughing, handsome faces, to have to associate with men who remind him incessantly of his own weakness-

 

His jealous hate is white-stark and burning. Acid, and blazing, and smeared in dripping self-loathing.

 

“Take them both,” he snaps, and Clegane, looking vaguely disturbed, drags this Davos away from his pretty highwayman whore. It is only later, when Stannis is praying upon his knees in his private chapel and asking for the Lord’s help to drive his unbidden demons back to the abyss from whence they came, he recalls the man’s shortened fingers, and the unwavering, possibly suicidal, determination of the utterly loyal. It hits like a hammer to the temple, and he stares, sightless, through the crucifix upon the plain altar. Stannis is sixteen years before, young and self-contained and driven, and there is no salt in the sailor’s brown hair, and the man’s warm smile is carefree and kindly.

 

Always the thoroughly unsuitable man, coming to Stannis in his dreams.

 

Always the smuggler.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit** :
> 
> _Flintlock pistols:_ The flintlock existed in an early form in the 1550s, but became popular during the early 17th century. They work through the means of a small piece of flint being attached to the hammer of a gun. When the gun is cocked and fired, the flint struck the frizzen, a steel plate above the pan of powder, producing a spark. This spark lit the powder in the gun and shot the round. They were popular for about three hundred years before being replaced by newer technology
> 
> _Hyde Park:_ Hyde Park was created by Henry VIII for hunting. In 1637 it was opened to the public by Charles I. Parts of Hyde Park were notorious for being the haunt of highwaymen; the park itself was not beautifully laid out as we are used to today, but contained wilder areas that were useful for robbers and dangerous for those travelling at night.
> 
> _Blunderbuss:_ The blunderbuss was the shotgun of the day; a muzzle-loading firearm used most successfully at short range. It usually has a distinct flare to the mouth of the barrel, to encourage shot to spread out, and to encourage ease of loading. They were often used by coach drivers as a means of self-protection. Blunderbuss comes from the Dutch, translating as _thunder pipe_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon, Oberyn and Willas correspond. I still wish Willas was in _Game of Thrones_ but he'd probably be dead in a ditch, on fire, being eaten by White Walkers, with a rose in his mouth, with his head on a spike for Margaery and Loras to admire from their gaol cells.

* * *

 

 

_My Lord Rochester,_

 

_I_ _wish to offer my sincere thanks, sir, for your kind invite to your masque last evening. Your gesture was very-_

 

Willas pauses, trying to think of another word for kind. He could ask Margaery, but she is quietly embroidering another silken rose, her hair about her shoulders in ringlets, rather absorbed in her task. She is never one to sit idle, always rushing and fussing, ordering servants, greeting visitors to their father’s London abode. Mace Tyrell remains in Wales, ever the landowner, prefering the calm of Anglesey to the frantic pace of London. His eldest son, his heir, understands completely.

 

He here because Olenna wished him to come, and he wishes she never ordered his presence.

 

London does not agree with Willas Tyrell. He yearns for mountains, and the sea rushing between his island home and the Snowdonia peaks. Castles - wondrous and huge and menacing. He breeds horses, and before he shattered his knee after being thrown from his finest gelding, he was a decent Master of the Hounds. The young squire, the locals call him. Willas is popular with his smallfolk; he speaks Welsh with the hint of the local accent that always tints his English exotic, and is known as a kind and benevolent master. The local mayor’s wife teases him, bakes him bara brith and griddled sweet welsh cakes, heavy cauldrons of cawl with fresh spring lamb, and he is happy to sit at their meagre table and eat with them.

 

His friends are not rich, or clever, or famed - they are solid, and capable, and he sometimes wishes he had the freedoms of his people.

 

Olenna demands he marry.

 

Willas Tyrell is an intelligent, well-educated, erudite young man, but his grandmother strikes the fear of the Gods into his heart with a sharp glitter of her wrinkled-prune eyes.

 

Willas gives in with a low sigh.

 

“Margie?”

 

“Dearest?”

 

“Another word for kind?”

 

She wrinkles her nose, and is even more beautiful. Many men have offered for her hand, but she is Olenna’s granddaughter, possessing the same wiles and temper as the old woman, and she is holding for a splendid match indeed. Joffrey needs a wife, after all, a cunning and silken-tongued woman who can control that vile madness he possesses.

 

“What is the context?”

 

“I am writing a thank you letter to Lord Rochester.”

 

“You are such a darling, Willas.” She puts her hoop and needle upon a chair, comes to his side with a rustle of silks and lace. Her hair is lightly scented, always rosewater at her pulse and throat. Margaery is the most lovely woman Willas has ever seen; how his blustering father ever produced her and Loras is quite beyond comprehension, but Mama had been one of the most handsome women of her generation - even if her beauty had skipped himself. “You do not have to, you know?”

 

“It is the proper thing to do, Margie.”

 

A ruffle of his hair, a kiss to his cheek. “Perhaps generous? His conduct was most generous?”

 

Perfect. He writes it in his surprisingly elegant hand, a loop to the letters belying the serious quietude of the man himself.

 

* * *

 

_My dear Mr. Tyrell,_

 

_I was charmed to receive your letter this morning; such prompt thanks I rarely am afforded. Sometimes it seems that having a reputation for throwing many splendid parties does mean that it can become a bore to those who attend. Perhaps drinking is the reason that many do not send their thanks? Champagne has a soporific effect upon the imbiber, though I have never found the fizz to quiet me to gentle contemplation. Indeed, I find that champagne can drive a man to heinous acts of poetry, and I therefore keep a glass near at all times when I write._

 

_I did mean what I said - you must come for dinner. Considering that you must be clutched within the bloodied talons of your grandmere, given her reputation, I am sure that you must need some restorative company. Perhaps you are available this Sunday? Or have you a prior and pressing engagement in regards to church? I am unaware of how you Welsh spend your Sabbath. Are you upon your knees all day, or do you prefer to have a quick session in the morning?_

 

_How fares your leg? If you wish me to have Loras publically flogged, I do have the ear of the King, I can organise this_

 

_Yours etc._

 

_P.s. Please, you must call me Oberyn. I insist._

 

* * *

_Ser,_

 

_Thank you for your letter which I received this afternoon. You are most kind in asking that I call you Oberyn when we have met but once, and most briefly. I shall try and remember to do as you ask, but I am sure I will lapse into calling you ser more than your name, for which I apologise beforehand._

 

_My knee is a little better, thank you. My grandmother, and she is most cross with Loras which means he is now hiding somewhere from her wrath (I think with Renly Baratheon), sent her physician to assess if I have caused more damage, and he has administered the usual treatments. I must remember not to fall off horses, as it does not agree with me!_

 

_Margaery tells me you are a poet of great repute, which I can very well believe given your eloquence and beautiful penmanship. I have asked her to bring me copies of some of your works - are there any that you suggest I should start with? Convelescence has meant I try and read as often and deeply as I can, a habit that I learned from school and Cambridge. Please, if you have recommendations, I would gladly hear them._

 

_Dinner would be splendid, if you are not busy. You really are a most generous person, ser, and I am in your debt for the warm goodness you show a new man to London. You are a man without equal, my Lord Rochester, and I am thankful for your friendship._

 

_Yours etc._

 

_P.s. If I am to try and call you Oberyn, you must please call me Willas._

 

* * *

_My dearest Willas,_

 

_Such sweet manner have I never known in London; you are a breath of fresh air, dear boy, bringing cheer to this jaded gentleman. I awake and wonder if I shall receive another of your cheerful letters, and here I am, just moments after finishing reading, replying. I am a lazy writer, and often I loathe those who I correspond with, but I find your honest straight-forwardness thoroughly engaging._

 

_Recommendations? We shall start with poetry; I presume you have read ‘Paradise Lost’, so perhaps for a meatier bite than that treacherous old miser Milton then Marvell in the Latin? I find his verse flows far more graciously in that language. Dryden is perhaps too populist and I disagree with his translations of Virgil. Your countryman, Vaughan, perhaps too terse, too religious in manner and tone. Donne is always a pleasure if one wishes for more voluptuous reading. Of my own works, I offer my meagre ‘A Satyr Against Mankind,’ for your consideration, or perhaps my translation of Ovid? I shall furnish you with the requested works when you come to dine. Are you fond of pheasant?_

 

_Do not fall off another horse, dear boy. You are too precious to have several hundredweight of horse crush you further._

 

_Yours etc._

 

_P.s. Have you heard of the arrest of the Gallant Gentleman? They say he is naught but a boy, and a pretty soul at that. The ladies of the court are in paroxyms._

 

* * *

_Lord Oberyn,_

 

_Writing letters can be a chore, it is true, but there is nothing more lovely than receiving a letter from a person from whom you wish to hear. As you did, I also do, and sit and write immediately. I think Margaery is a little jealous, as I never write to her as often as I do you. However, she is far more engaged in courtly intrigues, gowns, and cunning, so I think I am quite boring to her with my idle chatter of the estate, and foaling, and lambing, and literature._

 

_I find Milton very beautiful, and the imagery he uses in his works so very passionate, so full of emotion. To feel such sympathy for Satan at his fall, as he over-reaches, making one think about the morality and reality of good and evil, and how we, as a reader, consider these extremes. Have you read ‘Doctor Faustus’? How Marlowe’s Mephistophilis says that hell is nothing but an absence of heaven can send chills up spines. I agree with Vaughan, though the language seems easier in the Welsh. His native tongue was not English and I find it shows in his English works. Perhaps I shall translate his Welsh works for you, and we could compare how his language differs?_

 

_I have before me a copy of Marvell, which I shall begin once I have written to you._

 

_Margaery tells me that some of your poems are rather bawdy, and suggests I read what you recommend. I think she considers me her younger brother rather than twenty eight years old, always trying to look out for me! I suppose I must be quite ‘country’ compared to her sophistication. She does not find my prattling about improving the speed and stamina of horses through careful choice of sire and dam to be interesting whatsoever, but then I find her talk of parties a little tedious, but she and I listen to each other as we are loving siblings._

 

_Oh dear, I seem to be prattling at you now. I shall sign this and send._

 

_Yours etc._

 

_P.s. Horses are quite weighty when they stand upon your knee._  
_P.p.s I have heard, the poor young man. I would not wish to be brought before Stannis Baratheon, Margaery says he is an ogre but also quite handsome, which does not seem to lie well with me._

 

* * *

_Darling boy,_

 

_I hope that the port wine I plied you with at dinner does not cause your head too much mischief. I had always considered the Welsh a breed that could not stomach wine, but you coped admirably. Such a pleasant evening, and I must thank you for attending my intimate repast. It is rare to have company in which I can expound my literary theories, and when I learned of our joint passion for horseflesh then I simply had to keep you to myself for as long as I could._

 

_Please keep the copies of my works that I have given you, a gift from a friend to a truly wonderful dinner companion. You must come to me again, since I am now utterly bereft without your good company and pretty voice. Are all Welsh people are beautifully spoken as you? It is a thrilling note to a voice, when one is so used to polished refinement. You do not need airs and graces, sweet boy, you are quite perfect._

 

_Perhaps I should sleep before I simply pass out from a combination of excellent meat, drink, and friendship. I am, I admit, rather pissed. Perhaps if you were here we should drink, and talk, and smoke until we fall asleep together upon the sofa and dream of poetry, horses, and companionship._

 

_Yours etc._

 

_P.s. Stannis Baratheon is handsome in the way of the iceberg; frozen, icy, and nine-tenths of the man is hidden from view. He is both intriguing and, as your darling sister says, ogre-ish._

 

* * *

 

Margaery glances up from her embroidery as Willas reads his letter, touching the heavy paper with a certain fondness. His ears are red, and his mouth tugs into a soft, almost unwilling smile.

 

The writing, flowing and bold across the page, adorns many invitations that are delivered to the Tyrell manse. Always the same heavy card stock, with the engraved gold leaf, faintly perfumed with a musky scent of sandalwood. Masques, and balls, and soirees. Card parties. Celebrations for Oak Apple Day. Dinners where lovers murmur sweet nothings behind fans and hands.

 

She watches Willas, noting the pink across his sharp, perfect cheekbones - oh, Margaery wishes she could have such an elegant bone structure - his gentle hazel eyes a little wide, a little liquid-softness in his dear, sweet face.

 

Margaery takes up her sewing once more, but her fingers grip the needle too tightly and she stabs herself with the pointed end. Blood beads and she silently sucks the redness away. This, she decides, must be addressed. Martell will not have her brother. Not Willas. He has a good, tender heart; he is an innocent. Has he kissed another, or made love? Would he even wish for the masculine attentions of the good Lord? Margaery and Loras, tougher and more used to flirtation and assignations, thoroughly enjoyed their respective _tete-a-tete_ with Lord Rochester, but Willas? Her dear brother, unused to attention and protected from the frivolous sexuality of London life, is easy prey for a libertine such as Oberyn. What is even worse?

 

Willas is the sort to fall in love with the first person who shows him kindness.

 

No, this simply will not do.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit**
> 
>  
> 
> _Bara Brith_ : a very tasty yeast fruited bread made to a traditional Welsh recipe. We eat it with butter, but it can be had without it also. It makes me want to go and live in the homeland more than anything else, but I am kept in Staffordshire by the humble Staffordshire oatcake.
> 
> _John Milton_ : (1608-74) was a puritan man of letters, mostly known for _Paradise Lost_ (which is heavily used in this fic). He was given office in the government of Oliver Cromwell, but come the Restoration of Charles II faded from public life.
> 
> _Andrew Marvell_ : (1621-78) is probably most well known for the poem, _To His Coy Mistress_. He too was a Parliamentarian, though not a puritan, who survived the Restoration, even persuading Charles II to not execute John Milton. He was known as an incorruptible figure by many.
> 
> _John Dryden:_ (1631-1700) was England's first Poet Laureate. He is probably the most characteristic Restoration writer, and the period is often referred to as 'The Age of Dryden.' He pioneered, along with others, the Restoration Comedy, which saw women acting female roles for the first time.
> 
> _Henry Vaughan_ : (1621-95) was a Welsh poet, who did not have English as a first language (like most Welsh at the time). He wrote extensively upon the English Civil War, and the natural world. He influenced such wide ranging figures as Wordsworth, Siegfried Sassoon, and Philip K. Dick.
> 
> _Christopher Marlowe_ : (1564-93) was an influence upon of Shakespeare, and died in mysterious circumstances. His plays quite often explore the love between men in all forms, and are very sexually charged. He bridges the gap between the mummer plays of the early Tudor era, and the growth of theatre to what we understand today. 
> 
> _John Donne_ : (1572-1631) is regarded as one of the foremost metaphysical poets, and his works indicate a movement away from courtly language to a more personal style. His works changed from voluptuous in his youth to religious in old age; Donne became a chaplain in his forties.
> 
> _Oak Apple Day_ : 29th of May is Oak Apple Day, the public holiday to commemorate the Restoration of the Monarchy. It is no longer nationally celebrated in the UK.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

 

 

They are kept separate, in small, moss-dripping cells, in a dilapidated wing of Stannis Baratheon’s personal fiefdom.

 

The days melt together, beeswax destroyed by flames, and the darkness seems thick as tar. Davos lays upon the narrow hard shelf of a bed, blanket about his shoulders to try and combat the winter’s frozen fingers that thrust through the cracked stone and trace his goosefleshed skin - the Fire took much of the house, the fearsome heat breaking Londonstone itself. Unlike many it is not to be rebuilt in the style of Wren, but remains squat and hulking, a vast and miserably toad amongst the burgeoning beauty of the new city.

 

They feed him, mostly, and there is usually some water. He does not trust the liquid, but there is nothing else to drink and a man could die of thirst.

 

Davos is unsure of how long they have been gaoled. He hears Jon, breathing rapid as they bring him back from interrogation, but there are no windows - subterranean incarceration, where damp spits between flagged stone, and he is eerily thrown into an endless semi-night where the only lights are guttering torches and the lamps of the guards. One man, huge and scarred, is professional. The other, small and muscled and white-eyed, handsome in the way of the truly psychopathic, sometimes watches Davos through the bars of his cage with an unsettling hunger, as if the tattooed flesh would taste like the sweetest of treats.

 

Jon returns bruised, grey with sleeplessness and shoulders hunched, shivering consumptively.

 

They do not torture, not officially, but there are methods that can drive a man to speak. Keep a person awake, deny him sleep, and he will sing the songs his captors desire. Suggestions become facts upon tongues eager to rest.

 

“You.” The white-eyed guard smiles, almost lovingly, and his teeth are sharp and pointed in his pale face. “My Lord Justice wants you.”

 

Standing is somewhat difficult, muscles weak from malaise. An active man before this, the lack of fresh air and sunlight drives him to a quiet madness if he allows his mind to wander toward salty marshland and his freedom. Sal will take the inn, at least. His sons will assist. The ritual has been discussed many a-time; the what if’s of the organised criminal classes. The larger guard accompanies them, a hand upon Davos’ shoulder. As they climb the shallow worn stone steps, out from the pit, he sways slightly and Clegane, with his scars and massiveness, tightens his grip and keeps Davos from tumbling to his knees.

 

“Don’t know why Stannis won’t let me have a go at the highwayman,” grumbles the white-eyed guard. “I wouldn’t kill him.”

 

“You’d fuckin’ have him on a rack, Bolton.”

 

“Racks are boring. Flaying is far more civilised.”

 

“Twisted cunt.”

 

Bolton smirks at that, sensual and heavy lipped. “I would let him live, and he would be more tractable. There are ways, Clegane, even if you are too thick to know of them.” He launches into a sickening litany involving needles and candlewax, razors. Fire. The larger man does not flinch, not outwardly, but his fingers pinch with slightly trembling pressure as Bolton moves to branding with hot irons and how the delicate flesh of the inner thigh smells like pork when it is seared.

 

Davos, stomach empty, feels bile taint the back of his throat.

 

The home is utilitarian. None of the splendour of the Restoration; almost Cromwellian in the plain oak furniture, the lack of gorgeous colour. There are several portraits upon the walls, but they are as gloomy as the dust-moted surroundings. All is heavy panelling, and dark stone, whitewashed walls stark. An ancient house, more a bailey than a residence; it explains the cells, the dank moroseness. This is little more than a court of law, where the judge sometimes sleeps. The windows, heavily leaded, let in little natural light.

 

Stannis Baratheon sits behind a plain, sturdy desk, head bowed as he writes. Ink, and books, and papers litter every surface, and behind him, the same dark wood that pervades everywhere is shaped into shelving teeming with volumes bound in leather and gilt. He wears black; not the faded colour that Jon favours, but cloying and breathless, simple in design - no lace or fine bindings but well-fitted and pin-neat. No rings adorn his long, lean fingers.

 

“Sit,” he is ordered, and Davos does, in a chair that has restraints nailed to the arms and legs, leather supple and oiled. “And you two, leave us. I do not need protection from an innkeeper.”   
Bolton goes to say something, expression sharpening, but the judge raises an eyebrow and drives the sadist into a churning slump. Clegane nods as he closes the iron-studded door behind them.

 

For a while they remain silent, Davos sweating cold and nervous. Stannis does not look at him, but continues to write, fingers ink-black and quill scratching. His penmanship is all angles, and jarring, just as the man who wields the feather. There is silver in the short black Baratheon hair, strands at his temples. Unlike others, of wealth and privilege and power, he does not wear a wig. It gives the man a hardness, a military bearing. No flowing curls, just cropped and puritanical.

 

Stannis Baratheon is the dictator reincarnated, just as fleshless and diamond-hewn as the Lord Protector himself. For a moment Davos struggles to understand how such a man could bring back monarchy, with the gaudy liberties and sensuality of Robert’s court infecting all of society, from whore and actress to the greatest of the Dukes and Lords. Stern, and as far from the King as a brother can be, this is a man who does not fall to sin.

 

He still is fascinating. He still retains that silent power of a man in control.

 

Finally those blue eyes, and they are as blue as his memory remembered, regard him with cool indifference.

 

“Smuggler.”

 

“Ah.”

 

The pen is laid upon the desk after being wiped with a cloth, fastidious to a fault, and then he is being examined, minutely, from battered booted toe to greying hair. He feels-

 

Stripped. Flayed apart like some poor bastard Bolton gets his hands upon.

 

“You are still recognisable, Seaworth. I still remember shortening your fingers for your crimes. Even though it has been over fifteen years you still remain unchanged.”

 

“I still remember your justice, my Lord.”

 

“Yet you still consort,” and the word drips, “with criminals.”

 

“A criminal,” he corrects mildly. His sons and Sal are not for discussion.

 

“A mere boy, and how much do you take from him?” he asks, and his tone is vicious. Age and experience has tempered and refined that hardness to something more than steel.

 

“I take nothing that Jon does not give freely, my Lord.” The kiss still ached. Goodbye softness, and a breaking of boundaries, and neither had been the one to initiate. Indeed, their mouths clashed as equals, as fear and regret and pain drove the men to some passion dully understood and desperately explored for the first and last of times. The last rites of death, he supposes, the final wants of the prisoner. The kiss, imprinted when he closes his eyes; Jon’s soft, yielding, curling lips, the hands - surprisingly strong and wanton - at his arse, the hunger of life and death and all things between.

 

“He will be hanged.”

 

“It is the law, my Lord.”

 

“And yet you say that so meekly, smuggler. You sit before me as your lover is sentenced to death, and tell me that the law is absolute?”

 

He spreads his fingers. The scars alternate numb and sensitive, and sometimes Davos feels as if the ghosts of his fingertips still exist. They tingle, and he goes to scratch, and finds nothing but air and healed flesh. “This is the law, my Lord. I accepted your punishment for my crimes in 1659. I brought you to England, I risked my life to have you set your brother upon the throne, and then I gave you my hand freely as punishment for my deeds. I am a man who accepts consequences. Always have been. Always will be. And I love the boy. He is a son to me, even if-” and he pauses, swallowing. “He is a child, my Lord. He is nothing but a child.”

 

“A common thief, a highwayman. A murderer.” The last word echoes, and Davos hates the inflection, the spite.

 

“A murderer of those who deserve such punishment, my Lord. Even in your England, there are those to whom the law doesn’t apply. Could you stay your hand when a girl struggles to avoid her rape, her ruination, when she isn’t even old enough to bleed?”

 

“The law-”

 

“Hang your law, Stannis,” and he feels so very tired. “Just as you hang the wrongdoers. Can you look me in the eye and tell me that the wicked all suffer? How many others had that man deflowered? Would the court of law trust a man with gold and influence, or a poor serving girl with nothing, not even her virginity? No, she must have seduced him, she must have wanted him. A thousand times this happens, and yet nothing is done. Yet when Jon does what is right, and yes, against our laws, he is strung up.”

 

“You love the boy.”

 

“Of course I do. I love all of my children, even the ones that are not mine. Someone has to be a father.”

 

Stannis glitters. He is anger, and frustration, barely controlled in a body formed of rigid morality. To Davos, he is disturbing, and beautiful, just as he seemed sixteen years previously; the young man who could inspire others to die for him, fight for him. Blue-eyed, and not handsome. No, never handsome. Too flint, and angled, too unfashionably lean. He should eat more, Davos sees.

 

“You need to eat more, you’re starving away.” Concern spills, and then he rubs his forehead with his mutilated fingers. “I am sorry.”

 

“What,” and that low voice is hoarse, “would you do to free your boy?”

 

“Anything, my Lord.”

 

“Take his place at Tyburn?”

 

The answer is simple, and flows from the man’s cracked lips without hesitation.

 

“I would hang for Jon, my Lord. I would die for my boy.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit** :
> 
> _LondonstoneThe Fire:_ The Great Fire of London took place in 1666 and burned much of the old City of London to the ground. From the ashes rose London that we know today, complete with St. Paul's Cathedral and many of the beautiful stone/brick buildings that are a feature today. Before this most of the City was built of wooden-framed houses. The street patterns did not change, however, and adhered mostly to the medieval streets pre-Fire.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

 

 

“My Lord, you have a lady visitor,” murmurs his man, and Oberyn, deep in  _ Doctor Faustus _ , groans. Gods. He promised Willas that they would dine, and discuss the differences between Marlowe and Bidermann - and Martell prefers the debauched sensuality of the Elizabethan play to that of of the far more Germanic  _ Cenodoxus _ , even if he reads both in their original language. Mephistolphilis is seductive and beautiful, an angel and devil in one tempting fuckable package. Perhaps there is a whore he can persuade-?

 

No, he chases Willas. No deviation from his hunt is needed.

 

He is still rather stunned at what he encounters; the man’s sweet nature, the fierce and yet unmolded intellect that absorbs and wants and questions. That innocence. That beautiful white-clean innocence. They speak daily now, in notes written on cream paper that he looks forward to receiving, of life and literature and politics; Willas is uncultured in the latter at least, and Oberyn shapes his mind with the delicate touch of a sculptor carving his masterpiece. Tyrell has a sense of humour that tends towards the ridiculous, and when he speaks that accent, flickering vowels and elongation and a dreamy softness of tongue and mouth, he sends sparks through Oberyn’s loins. Willas could read the parliamentary reports and still make a man want to posses that mouth.

 

He has never actively liked a conquest as much as the unassuming man with the crippled leg, or chased so ardently. Willas is not beautiful, or physically magnificent. His looks are neat and plain. He needs to use a cane and limps heavily. Sometimes he looks ill with life, a little ashy about the edges. He apologises far too often for matters rarely his own fault, and sometimes, when he thinks of Loras, Willas seems as if he is to be beaten.

 

“I suppose I should talk with whoever has the temerity to attend me during the afternoon.”

 

“Very good, my Lord.”

 

His man, whom he has not had since one does not muddy the waters of home, goes to fetch the visitor.

 

Oberyn is a little surprised, but not overly, as Margaery Tyrell sweeps into the lounge, in her rose-pink riding habit, veiled hat perched upon her tumbling hair.

 

“Oberyn,” and her voice is tight, and sharp. She is the image of her Grandmere.

 

“Madame, please sit. To what do I owe the pleasure?” He knows. He can see in her expression, the stern curve of her rosebud mouth. How protective is Margaery over her eldest brother, who she loves and neglects. Thorns, all of them, for even the sweetest smelling of roses can make flesh bleed. He has never seen the girl so beautiful, so fierce. Idly he wonders if he should take her against the wall, have the Tyrell anger breaking against his shoreline as he fucks, pounding her ire from her very body with his own.

 

This is the wrong sibling. This is not his sweet boy.

 

“I shall not, Oberyn, this is just a very quick visit. I know what you are doing, and I am asking you to stop your nonsense.” Straight to her point; there is never courtly language between these two. Margaery always speaks plain to Martell. She once came up to him at a summer ball and told him, a murmur almost unheard in his ear, that he was to take her to bed. She makes love almost like a man, with a drive and control, a dominance that Oberyn finds quite fascinating given her youngest brother’s elegant, feminine passivity. Loras is her opposite. They should have been eachother.

 

“My dearest Margaery, I do not know what you mean.”

 

She steps forward, dainty and prickling.

 

“You know perfectly well, so stop pretending. I will not see Willas hurt because you want something new to toy with.”

 

“Ah, you are always so blunt.”

 

“He is not like us.”

 

“And that is why he is so tempting. Innocence is beautiful.”

 

The woman’s hands clench and for a long moment Oberyn knows she means to slap him. She is the sort to curl her fingers, use her nails, leave long bloody welts upon the cheek of her victim.

 

“Willas, you fool,” and she is thorns and petals and lovely, “will break his heart. I know what Renly offered, because he told Loras. Gold for my brother, and you stand here and just think of how much you want to deflower him! You disgust me, Oberyn. You and I, we are alike. Snakes and roses both bite, after all. We take what we want, we fight for what we want to possess. And I will not let you hurt my brother just because you want a new arse to fuck, because you are so depraved that shattering a poor man is exciting, that wounding a man who is the best of anyone I know makes you aroused. I will tell him of the bet, unless you stop filling his head, stop seducing, stop dragging him in.”

 

“And so you will break him rather than I?” He smiles, amused, but his eyes remain cold. “Is betrayal from yet another family member worth this, Margie?” The pet name makes her snarl; only Willas calls her that, in a fond and loving tone that does the man great credit. “When Loras is mentioned he flinches like a beaten cur. Do you want your name to instill the same? Do you want to drive that dear sweet boy to further pain and suffering? He fears his brother. He looks upon Loras and sees everything that an heir to an estate should represent. He suffers because he feels lesser. Does he tell you this, Margie? Does he open his heart to you? Does he speak of his dreams? Dreams that are not worthy, dearest girl, because they belong to him. Are simple, yes. Not so Tyrell. All he wants is peace. No grand marriage. No shining star of fame. He wishes for understanding. Your family gives him nothing apart from abuse, scraps of affection when you are guilty. When teasing finally opens external wounds, when he cowers. To you he is merely another pet, to be neglected. You see nothing of his intellect. His passions. His good simplicity wrapped in a cleverness that means nothing to his family. How he loves that family even if they do not particularly care for him. You see nothing, Margaery, but your own selfish needs.”

 

She stares, before her hand presses to her mouth.

 

“Do you understand?”

 

“You have feelings,” she whispers, a haunted air. “You-”

 

Oberyn watches the woman, levelly.

 

“Gods, Oberyn, you-?”

 

“Good day, Miss Tyrell.”

 

* * *

 

_ Oberyn, _

 

_ I did not receive a letter from you yesterday, and I hope you are well. If there is anything I can do to assist if you ail, please tell me, and I shall do my utmost to help. _

 

_ My grandmother came to visit last evening, and approached me again with yet another young lady. Her name (the young lady, obviously) is a Miss Stark, and she comes from hardy northern stock with the requisite childbearing hips that are so beloved by Olenna. Apparently Miss Stark is very beautiful, though very young, and Grandmother intends to press the match and bring it to an inevitable conclusion. She seems most intent this time, more than with any other young lady. _

 

_ Do you think if I ran away to the continent I may avoid the match? I have heard that Geneva is splendid. Have you been to Geneva? I am sure that you must, you are very well travelled. Would you recommend the most clever place to hide from grandmothers? _

 

_ Margaery seems a little strange today. She returned from riding yesterday afternoon with a queer look about her, and when I asked if she was alright, she said I should not fret, she is perfectly fine. I really do not understand ladies, Oberyn, for even Margie seems confusing. She is a good sister, and brought me some tea later, but she seems preoccupied with something that takes her mind away. She has not even sewn another rose today. _

 

_ I shall finish here. Again, I hope that you are well. I am about to start upon your collected volume, though Loras laughed when he saw I had such a book. To be honest, I am not quite sure if he knows how to read words of more than two syllables. _

 

_ Hush, Willas, and do not be cruel. _

 

_ Yours etc. _

 

_ P.s. If you are unwell, I could visit if you would like that? I could read to you, if that would be pleasing? _

 

* * *

_ Dearest Willas, _

 

_ My utmost apologies for neglecting my writing, I am but your humble servant who asks your forgiveness, sweet boy. Yesterday proved a taxing day, and I assure you that I am well. However, I would never turn you reading to me away, given your vocal talents in such an area. You have the voice of a chorister. I have been assured that this is indeed a Welsh trait, and one for which I am most thankful. Your countrymen must sing like larks in the summer. _

 

_ Geneva is unfortunately inaccessible during the winter as the Alpen snows hide the town amongst glacial peaks and frozen lakes. I recommend Siena, or Florence perhaps. Warm and healing to limbs and minds. Such is the beauty of those fair cities, Willas, that I would away with you - a grand tour, perhaps, of seeing the sights and experiencing the wines and culture. Perhaps we shall arrange such an adventure, you and I? _

 

_ Your sister is both beautiful and intelligent, and one of the more sensible of women that I have the honour of knowing. I am sure she is just pining over an errant lover, or considering how to woo the heart of our little prince Joffrey with whom she seems quite enamoured. There is no according for taste, however. Having met the hideous boy, I only hope she can bully him to some King-ish mould. _

 

_ Darling boy, you say only what the rest of society thinks. Unlike you, your brother is not popular apart with a certain breed of gentleman that seeks more than polite conversation and friendly ribaldry. You possess more elegance of manner and heart than Loras could even consider. _

 

_ Yours etc. _

 

_ P.s. You need not have an excuse to call. I am forever at home to sweet Ganymede. _

 

* * *

 

_ Oberyn, _

 

_ You flatter me far too much, and I am not sure what I have done to deserve your kindness. Quite often, when I am a little morose, I think about the letters that you send - I have kept them, perhaps this is a little silly and overly fond, but you are a good and true friend. You have, I am unsure if counting them makes me foolish, sent seventeen letters, including the one which I received last evening. _

 

_ I am not handsome or perfect enough to be Ganymede, and the cup-bearer to the Gods must be able to walk without spilling ambrosia. I think Zeus would have great trouble snatching me to live in the heavens. Perhaps I am more Lycidas, the herder of goats - or horses, preferably, since goats can be troublesome sorts? A pastoral idyll fits me more than Olympus, I am sure. _

 

_ Florence sounds wonderful, and Siena charming. Have you read the works of Machiavelli? Such an interesting expounding of the high renaissance prince, though I am unsure if I agree with some of his tenets. Such ruthless cynicism, but if one does live in a time and place where such is to be expected, then it is best to be the greatest of players of the game. I am told by one of the books I found in the library (we do have one, but not as splendid as yours) that Tuscany still thrives under the Medici family, and to visit would be most educational. More than that, I would be in your company and, for me, that is more precious than fine art and Romantic ruins. _

 

_ I would, if you liked, accompany you abroad. I would be honoured. _

 

_ Really, ser, I hold you in the highest of regards, and I am just thankful that one is illustrious as yourself would look upon me with such warmth. You are my protector, Oberyn, and you do not seem to realise. _

 

_ Yours, as ever, _

 

_ P.s. If we are comparing to Milton, and I am Lycidas, you are, of course, Satan himself. _

 

* * *

 

_ Dear boy, _

 

_ “Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in his shape how lovely: and pined his loss.” - Milton, Paradise Lost. _

 

_ Dine with me. Tonight. We will discuss further. _

 

_ Yours, always. _

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit**
> 
> _Dr. Faustus/Cenodoxus_ : Different versions of the same miracle play. Faust sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for four and twenty years of voluptuousness. Mephistophilis is the demon who brokers the pact. Kit Harrington is currently starring as Faustus in the Marlowe version of this play. I played Mephistophilis, and regard it as my favourite role. Better than Hamlet.
> 
>  _The Grand Tour_ : Not just the name of the new Amazon Prime programme with Hammond, Clarkson and May. This was a trip of Europe undertaken by wealthy young men, mostly British, from about 1660 onwards. It was designed to complete their education by exposing them to the cultures of the ancient and Renaissance worlds.
> 
>  _Ganymede_ : Trojan-born Cupbearer of the Gods, stolen by Zeus and taken to Olympus because of his great beauty. His Latin name, Catamitus, is the word from which 'catamite' is derived.
> 
>  _Lycidas_ : The subject of a pastoral elergy by Milton. The character is a goat-herder, but the poem commemorates the passing of Edward King, a classmate of Milton's at Cambridge, who drowned whilst at sea. 
> 
> _Satan_ : The Morningstar, the most beautiful of angels who fell from Heaven. Milton writes him as a complicated, sympathetic character in _Paradise Lost_ , seductive and tempting in measure. He is extremely compelling, even when his goals are less than noble.
> 
>  _Medici_ : A hugely influential Italian banking family most known for their role in facilitating the Italian Renaissance in Florence, who married into the royalty of many European nations such as France. By 1675 the family still remained the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, but were in heavy decline.


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

 

 

Stannis laces his hands behind his head. Above him the ceiling is gritty with dust and spiderwebs, suggestions of soot from the Fire still blackening the plaster scrollworks. He should order it whitewashed.

 

Sleep does not come naturally to the man. He has learned that driving himself to exhaustion is the only guarantee of rest. He is awake by five, and then often works until midnight. Meals are taken at his desk, brought by Waters who sometimes pauses and asks if he can do anything more to ensure the judge’s comfort. Gendry is, frustratingly, an able young man. He has placed the petition for removal to the armories before Robert and the decision is pending. As promised. For now he keeps the bastard within his own sphere, allowing the natural intellect to develop. His writing proves appallingly shoddy, but Gendry is quick at mathematics.

 

His thoughts drift, as ever, to the smuggler, the highwayman, and his own hunger for knowledge.

 

Davos, trustworthy and loyal and completely honest, swore he would die for the highwayman.

 

But who is Jon Snow?

 

What is their connection? That kiss, that searing needy kiss, suggests something more than the love of a father. Yet, when the smuggler speaks, his voice so very reasonable, so measured, he talks of Jon as his own blood. The young man is too removed from the Seaworth look to be Davos’ own; he appears northern, with the pale skin and dark hair that seems ubiquitous to the coldness of Cumberland and beyond. Having seen the children of Umbers, Karstarks, the Bolton bastard who keeps the cells, he could be kin to any family. He is not of the south, of London mud and sluggish pollution. Davos, with his accent, his expression, his down-to-earth sense, is pure Southwark. The Gallant Gentleman is more than this.

 

Not finer, not better. Stannis Baratheon has an uncomfortably high opinion of Davos Seaworth that leads to longer prayers in his chapel and by his bedside; pleas to the Gods for repentance. He does not know why he is fascinated, why he fixates upon this one man, but he is aware, dull and embarrassed and self-loathing, that this predates even the Restoration. There is much to be said for a man who offers his hand for punishment without recourse to begging for mercy. There is much to be said for a man who thanks his mutilator without rancour.

 

The bluish ink that can be seen decorating the smuggler’s chest where shirt parts over flesh drives him towards damnation. He replays the kiss sometimes, helplessly churning his mind, but instead Davos ravishes Stannis’ mouth with the same warm tenderness, the same careful command.

 

“Clegane?”

 

“M’lord?” The brutish figure appears in the doorway. 

 

“Sit with me and talk, I have need of your ear.”

 

What he speaks of with Sandor does not go beyond these panelled walls. He has no reason to distrust the big soldier with the wreck of a face. Clegane is Scottish, an auld ally. His impoverished noble family supported the return of kings, and were rewarded with the two sons given positions at court. Gregor, now head of the family, is a terrible and vicious thug who now serves as a mercenary captain in Austria. Stannis had him exiled from the realm for his litany of crimes and frankly the Habsburgs can take him, damn their souls. Sandor, essentially decent enough under his brutal honesty and devil-may-care attitude, even after a youth tormented by his elder brother, belongs to Stannis.

 

“Go on, m’lord.”

 

“Jon Snow. Where is he from? Who are his family?” Purely professional curiosity. Stannis is the sort of man, when offered a mystery, must solve it or be plagued with failure for all time. 

 

Sandor runs a battered hand across his stubbled jaw, tracing scars as he thinks.

 

“Northern name, and the colourin’ suggests north. He’s not local born. He looks more like us than you southern bastards.”

 

The judge does not hide a faint quirk of his mouth. Sandor is amusing in his inability, more likely refusal, to flatter or conceal. Others think the man may jest in his speech, but having known the boy since he was merely twelve years old, Stannis is aware that Clegane does not hide behind anything. He is as he is. He appreciates the honesty.

 

“I thought the same. What would a northern child be doing upon the doorstep of an inn on the Romney Marsh?”

 

“Bastard, probably. Either he wandered off and the parents couldnae find him, or he was dumped at the home of a good man.”

 

“You believe that Seaworth is a good man, Sandor?” Idly. Weighted.

 

“Brought you buggers back, didn’t he? I knew it was him the moment I saw the hand, you never forget the tale of someone who holds their hand out for another to cut parts off as if it were just normal. Never a cunt, that one. Never asked for anything, did he? You’d think that since he saved your sorry Baratheon arses, he’d ask for all the shit in the world, but he just fucked off and set up a bloody pub. Says somethin’ of the man, doesn’t it?”

 

Sandor, as always, has a point.

 

“I need to know-” He scratches a note upon a scrap of paper. “I need these records. Considering the boy was abandoned in Southwark, ask at St. Saviour’s first. They have the most complete books of births and deaths. Look for northern names, specifically dating to about 1559.”

 

“Why not send Waters?” he asks, though they both know the answer.

 

“I need discretion, Hound, not one of Robert’s bastards.”

 

* * *

 

The next interviews with Stannis Baratheon are strange. It seems that weeks pass like aeons, but he does not know how long he has been incarcerated.

 

Jon does not understand what is wanted, but he tells them everything. He is too beaten-down to fight, starving and beyond exhaustion. He mumbles of Davos, and Sal and the Seaworth boys, and being found upon a doorstoop when just six years old. His mother had dark hair and grey eyes, and seemed so very sorrowful. He remembers little of her; soft arms, and sometimes the scent of treacle or wet dog brings back a sharpened memory of being held very tightly and loved greatly. Her name is a mystery, and her death even more so. He presumes she must be dead, for the memories are overwhelmingly filled with a desperate love that only a mother who has nothing else but her child can give.

 

He does not remember his father. He must have died before Jon was born.

 

When Jon closes his eyes, he falls into five second slumbers that send him insensible. Dreams seem to last for hours but are merely snatches of his mind absorbing the sounds of Baratheon’s voice, or Ramsay Bolton’s frighteningly lucid schemes for torture, or Davos’ whispering designed to keep spirits alive. He lives lifetimes in the time it takes to blink, and when he comes to everything has a quality that seems covered in thin silk. Hazy, and shrouded.

 

Again he repeats himself. Again he describes events, of the past and the present, that incriminate him more and more. Most of the time Jon does not even know he speaks, lips slack and tongue heavy and slow. The questioning flickers between subjects overly quick, and he finds this difficult to follow.

 

So tired.

 

So many times he is brought before the judge and asked questions that he stumbles to answer.

 

This time, as always, they bind him too the chair. Not that Jon could escape. He is malnourished, kitten weak. The chaining is done for power, he knows. Clegane ensures a modicum of comfort but Bolton, who he fears because no man can deal with another such as Ramsay, not when deprived and broken and living between realities, tightens the leather bitingly.

 

“Your mother,” Stannis says in his careful, pointed way, spectacles upon his nose, and Jon’s head falls back.

 

Sleep.

 

Davos laughs and kisses his cheek, gathers him up into his arms and shows him flintlock pistols for the first time. He explains how the powder is placed, then the shot. How firing left-handed could set a charge into a man’s face if he uses a musket. Davos is left-handed but shoots with his right, showing a clumsy determination honed from many years of almost piracy. He is seven.

 

“According to these records-”

 

He sits upon Sal’s knee, and the man wears peacock blues and teal, and smells of the sea. Davos kisses the captain with a warmth that sends Jon’s head spinning, and goes to pour more ale. These are the last days of the two being together like this, before they turn from lovers back to friends. He loves Sal, but not as much as he loves Davos. He is eight.

 

“Birthed in-”

 

Devan throws an arm about his shoulder, muscle lean and toned. Jon is in awe of a boy three years older than him, who sails with Sal, who tells tales of the Indies or the Orient. He is more a man than a child now, and Jon wants nothing more than to be like his almost brother. One day he shall sail with Sal, and Devan, and the other Seaworth boys. He is twelve.

 

“Stark-”

 

His first horse is a broken-down nag with a swayback and a heavily plain head. Jon rescued her for naught but a small cask of ale when she escaped from the knackerman. He liked her independence, the way that she did not go quietly unto her death. She crunches carrots from his palm, and Jon cannot believe the creature belongs to him. He cares for her lameness, but she never runs perfectly sound. He is thirteen.

 

“Bastard son of-”

 

The first robbery, and his hand is slick with sweat upon a pistol Sal bought him as a nameday gift. They do not know the true date, but use the day when Davos first found him crying upon the stone steps of the inn. There is a woman within the carriage, and she blinks when she sees his face - he has not yet learned to cover his mouth and nose with a scarf, not yet - pressing her purse and rings into his hands with a strangeness that is not all because of his gun. She has red hair, and bright blue eyes, and is the first rich lady that Jon has ever seen so close. She murmurs something about her husband, and a daughter with grey eyes, and he does not take her wedding ring. She is dressed in widow’s blacks, and he regrets his thievery. After this he attends church obsessively. He is fifteen.

 

“Winterfell-”

 

He shudders upright, heart cold and panicking in his chest. Everything swims, and the torches seem halo-bright.

 

“Fetch the smuggler,” Baratheon is saying to the larger, better guard.

 

“Davos.” His lips ache, tongue sluggish. 

 

“He will be here shortly.”

 

He fumbles, trying to recall what has passed, but there is nothing. Sleep. Just a little sleep, and Jon could try and understand. Exhaustion makes him breathless. Baratheon talked, and he saw the past.

 

Fingers touch his arm, and Davos crouches, knees clicking, next to his chair. A sure hand adjusts the straps, and the sharpness of flesh regaining blood flow makes him whimper.

 

* * *

 

Jon is too pale, and thoroughly ill, and Davos aches. The young man is limp and white, lolling boneless in the confines of the chair. 

 

“He needs rest, Stannis. He needs a physician.”

 

“I know who his parents are, smuggler.”

 

The words linger, and Davos feels the world shift under the very bedrock and stone. He finds himself upon his knees, bone digging against flags, his hand at Jon’s fragile wrist. They have both lost too much weight, though the boy, naturally slender, looks more sick. Seaworth bodies run to broad backed and stocky muscle if kept exercised, and fat if neglected. With rationed food, Davos is lean, shoulders too wide.

 

“I looked myself, but-”

 

“The highwayman provided most of the information. I am aware of your dislike of my methods, but they have proven successful many a-time. In not allowing sleep, a mind can be searched with far greater ease. Many things have I learned from Jon Snow, involving himself, you, your sons. Some pirate called Saan. I shall add sodomy to your list of vices, smuggler. Perhaps two will hang at the gallows.”

 

He feels sick. 

 

Davos drags himself forward to rest his shaking hands upon the crowded desk, ignoring the protest from his knees. Under his fingers the wood is dry and pitted with age, holed and wormy.

 

“Who are my boy’s parents?”

 

“Jon, born in the month of December 1659, registered at St. Saviour’s, Southwark. Mother, one Lyanna Stark. Father,” and he pauses, licking his lips, something hiding amongst the dark storm-blue. “Father, and if this is true, Davos. If this is true, if this is damnably true-”

 

It is the first time that Stannis has called him his name. 

 

“Who?”

 

“Robert.”

 

The surname does not even need to be said. 

 

“They were to wed, did you know?” The man’s tone is gritted and sanding. “She was beautiful. A fine woman, a strong and fearless girl with the heart of the north about her. The Starks always supported us, smuggler. They funded us, they kept us aware of happenings within the country. Letters and coin, though this grew less as the years passed and the regime grew paranoid, came from Winterfell to wherever we begged, and assured us that one day the monarchy will rise once more. Of course Robert and Lyanna became betrothed, married by proxy. Of course Robert could not keep his hands from his almost wife. Of course Tywin Lannister, with his money and power, offered his daughter. We were broke, and the gold sore needed, so Robert agreed to take Cersei instead of Lyanna, and broke his own heart. What we did not know, and now I think upon the situation I rue my own stupidity given my brother’s fecundity, is that the girl could have been with child. Robert is never a man to restrain himself where beautiful women are involved.”

 

“He is your nephew.” Everything that is said, and it glares like sharp-cut diamond. 

 

“Yes.”

 

Hope burns. It pours through his veins like wine, and tingles fingers that are mutilated. Jon is a Baratheon child, and perhaps, just perhaps, this may save him from death.

 

“Why did he come to be upon my doorstep?”

 

“This is where my knowledge grows less sure. I have written to Catelyn Stark for confirmation but this has not yet arrived. I posit that Lyanna Stark was found living in Southwark and was sent to Winterfell without her child.”

 

“And what of the lady?”

 

“Dead.” Brutal. “She married Rhaegar Targaryen, who loved her despite her dishonour, and died in childbed the next year.”

 

“You cannot kill your own nephew, Stannis.” 

 

Stannis regards him over the rims of his spectacles.

 

“No one is above the law, smuggler.” The words clang, the close of a portcullis that Davos had thought, hoped, could remain open. Stannis is walls, and deep moats, and heavy fortifications. He is back to his hardened self, pitiless and iron. For a blessed moment he seemed human, and of flesh, rather than the granite statue aping a man.

 

“Did they cancel the proxy, before he wed Cersei?” Desperation brings inspiration. “Did they do the annulment correctly, Stannis? Because if that was neglected-”

 

That stops the man short. “I presume-”

 

“Never presume, for Gods’ sakes, Stannis, before you go and kill the bloody heir to the throne!”

 

“Even kings are not gods.”

 

“And now you sound like the Lord Protector himself. Did you not fight to remove his influence?”

 

“Stop!” Stannis is upon his feet, stalking about the desk and towards Davos, inches separating them. “You dare compare me to that man, even when you saw, you witnessed, everything that I did? I created the King. I brought the monarchy back to England. Me, smuggler. Not Robert, or Renly, or any other. Everything is me, from the ground to the ceiling. And yet, when the smallfolk recall who restored the throne, they think of Robert, of his charm and ways and how glorious having Christmas and theatre is. They think of parties, and rich dress, and the layers of society between poverty and wealth. They see nothing of what it takes to make this work, none of them - Robert, Renly, the merest peasant. Someone needs to retain some semblance of order, Seaworth. Someone needs to be morality within this damned country. If I break, just a little, then the whole house of cards comes crashing upon us all. Where does that leave us? War. Plain and simple. More war, more death. What is the life of a highwayman compared to the deaths of thousands more?”

 

“Could you slay your kin, Stannis?” The man before him is glorious in his anger. Davos feels himself slip once more, as he did so many years before. A man cannot shake the influence of Stannis Baratheon. He can never be forgotten, even after many years and silvering hair, the births of sons and the deaths of wives. “Could you tell the hangman to put a noose about Jon’s throat and have him hanged? What would it take to stay your hand if you are so insistent? I will go in his place, just don’t damn him.” He swallows, his shortened fingers touching the fine broadcloth of Stannis’ coat. “Don’t damn yourself. Let me hang, as I have begged you before, and take him to his father.”

 

“Damn you, smuggler,” he hisses. “I did not bring you here to destroy morality. What will killing you achieve?”

 

“Your salvation.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit** :
> 
> _Habsburg_ : Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, who also at various times ruled most of the thrones in Europe, notably Spain. They are renowned for their Targaryen-style incest and lack of genetic diversity. Charles II, King of Spain (1665-1700) was so affected by 16 generations of inbreeding that he was physically and mentally disabled, and unable to reproduce - he was therefore the last Habsburg King of Spain. Charles’s own mother was the niece of his father, and his grandmother was also his aunt.
> 
> _British Mercenaries_ : Mercenaries from across Britain and the continent were highly popular during the 17th and 18th centuries. Approximately 15% of Scotsman during this era were employed as mercenaries in Europe. Louis XV had a Scottish Guard, as did other rulers; most countries had permanent wings of their armies made of foreign regiments. I do have a favourite mercenary - John Hawkwood, who served in Italy in the 14th century, first for the Pope and then other city states. He rose from being a crafter (possibly a tailor) to being the foremost soldier of his generation.
> 
> _St Saviour's_ : Now Southwark Cathedral. Originally the church, St Mary's Overie ('over the water'), was part of the Southwark Priory of St Mary, but was rededicated to St. Saviour after the creation of the Church of England by Henry VIII. In 1905, with the creation of the Southwark diocese, it became a cathedral. The name, St. Saviour, is thought to refer to Christ the Redeemer.


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

 

 

“More wine?”

 

“Perhaps a little, please.”

 

Oberyn believes in intimacy fostering more. They have eaten - and really, the quince tart was truly spectacular this evening, sending Willas, who loves sweets and ices more than any child, to pleasured murmuring - and now settle upon the elegant sofa in the library. Port is to hand, and the candlelight and banked hearth sends the comfortable room to a glowing lazy warmth. 

 

Willas is tipsy, and it suits him. The seriousness fades into smiles, into relaxation never seen by another apart from Oberyn. The man admits that he feels he can be more himself when with his friend; no need for nerves, or play-acting what his family requires. Sometimes he ends up speaking a strange dialect of Welsh and English combined, and then laughs at himself. The exotic vowels and hissing reminds him of a sand snake; unremarkable, Oberyn supposes, unless looked at with an appreciating eye. Plain he may be, but there is beauty in the quirk of a lip, and honest hazel eyes, and in that rich voice.

 

He did not understand before that an accent could drive a man to distraction. When Willas reads, even in Latin or French, the Welshness tenderly caresses each letter. Makes love to each word. He is so aware of how Willas speaks that he can imagine being talked to frantic completion, hand working upon his member, dreaming of lips against his ear.

 

Others fetishise breasts, or arses, or thrusting cocks. Faces. Hair. Once Oberyn did. But now he could just climax with a neatly dressed man talking with him. When Willas lapses into his passions, when he waxes lyrical upon poetry, or philosophy, or his beloved horses, Rochester finds his body responding.

 

“Willas?”

 

“Satan?” A grin, bright and relaxed and himself; Willas is lovely. Oberyn has been the Morningstar since the second glass of claret, the sparkling light in his companion’s eyes deepening with each draught. 

 

“Perhaps Lucifer?”

 

“Oh no, definitely not.” The merest hint of slurring. “Oh, you have most definitely fallen, Oberyn, no more Lucifer for you.”

 

“All the best angels fall, sweet boy.” He has such an urge to run the pad of his finger across one of those beautiful cheekbones, slide from skin to the faintly purpled lips stained with grapes. “But Virtue remains absolute. Goodness strikes awe into the most debauched of demons, for we forget what we once possessed and wish to once more be as perfect.”

 

“You are very sure of my goodness.” They removed their coats before they sat. Fine linen, though not as embroidered and beautiful as Oberyn’s shirt, skims pale flesh. Willas is still too thin, but it gives him a bookish, artistic quality that could cause the fall of several more angels, possibly even tempting Principalities themselves. “And I am more than a little drunk. That is not good, is it? That is quite naughty in itself.”

 

“Is my dear friend going to fall?”

 

He giggles, and Oberyn almost groans with it all. This flirting, this delicate dance. Perhaps Willas is unaware of how he has been so tempting, so deliciously innocent in his words, his phrasing? Little by little the letters have become warmer, more adoring, more filled with passion and worship. Pet names. Arch references to literary figures which may seem quite usual to the lay person but to those who know the true meaning? Lucifer, the most beautiful of the angels of heaven, the Morningstar, the Light in the Dawn. Complex and driven and beloved and who fell, utterly, into depravity. 

 

“Can I climb back up again if I do? Can a man fall just a little?” His eyelids are half-closed, lashes dark smudges against his cheek.

 

“An interesting philosophical question, sweet boy.”

 

“I like you calling me that.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Sweet boy.” The blush is sudden and shocking, burning across ears and cheeks. It makes those freckles stand proud and dark, and gives Willas a healthiness that he never quite achieves outside of these chambers. 

 

“You are my sweet boy.” Purring, and Oberyn cannot help shift infinitesimally closer to the tempting man sprawled and boneless beside him. “You are the best of any of us. You bring shame upon us all, just by existing.” He knows that Willas will kiss him back, soft and drunk and tinted with rich wine. Just a hand upon the slim thigh, trailing lightly to the join between his legs, the merest brush of lips to the neat jawline, and Willas Tyrell, who he has chased and waited for and has come to regard so very highly, will crumble beneath him and beg to fall. That innocence shall turn to dust with the whimpers of pleasure, the throaty desperation in his beautiful voice.

 

He cannot.

 

His fingers refuse to move to the long breech-clad leg. His mouth will not graze the curve of a delicate ear. 

 

Oberyn frowns, blinking.

 

No. He truly cannot. He will not.

 

“Willas?”

 

“Mmm?” He is ripe for debauchery, soft and liquid. Kisses. More than that. Oberyn could take that slender man before the fire, right here, break him apart and shatter his perceptions of everything for a heady evening of pleasure that would echo along the ages. One evening of splendid fucking, of introducing a virgin to the arts of love making, ruining him for all time. 

 

He would win that fifty sovereigns, and that fine hunting dog, and he would destroy the sweetest boy he ever knew.

 

“I bet that I could fuck you.” Guilt stabs, ice picks and daggers, and he tucks his legs under him. “I bet Renly Baratheon fifty sovereigns that I could debauch you, sweet boy.”

 

Willas turns his head. The firelight and candles send heavy shadows below his cheekbones and eye sockets, and he is a beautiful skull.

 

“I am so very sorry, sweet one. I am so truly sorry.” He has never apologised to a conquest, especially one that he has not yet taken. “ I needed to tell you. I had no idea that you would be so-”

 

“Stupid,” Willas whispers, and the warmth surrounding them both breaks to nothing. Suddenly there is coldness and frightening lucidity. Sickness. The blood drains from Tyrell’s cheeks and the man is horribly, achingly sober now; sitting up, face in his hands and Oberyn can feel the man’s heart explode into a thousand messy bloody bits. “I am so stupid. Gods. I-I have to go home. I need to go. Could you please arrange a carriage for me?” There are no tears, just a hideous blank horror that sends Oberyn trying to touch him, trying to pet and soothe, but his hands are knocked away with a strength and grace.

 

“I am so sorry.” The words seem tiny, useless.

 

“I would have followed you to the ends of the earth, Oberyn. I would have left all of this for you. I thought-”

 

“You are better than I. I could not bear to muddy you. I had to speak the truth.”

 

“After making me love you. Are you truly a cruel man? Or just a thoughtless one, who does not understand how you can make a person wish to devote themselves to you utterly? Yes, I am a fool. A stupid, sorry fool, who thought that someone as you, as handsome and cultured and clever and brilliant as you, could ever have any sort of true regard for me? I should have stayed in Wales. I should never have come to London. There are always tales, are there not, of some poor innocent country girl coming to the capital and losing her virtue because of some handsome black-eyed noble. I am nothing but that. I am  _ nothing _ but that. A stupid romantic idiot.”

 

The coat, darkish blue that sets Willas’ frantic hazel eyes almost oily, is pulled on untidily, the cane seized, and Oberyn starts forward.

 

“Please do not leave me, Willas? Do not go, not like this. Let us talk-”

 

“And keep looking at your handsome face? No, Oberyn. You are selfish more than cruel. I am going. I must go . I am such an idiot. To think you- To think I could even think you would. As Mephistophilis says- How stupid was I to think you actually enjoyed my prattling? Oh Gods. 

_ Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it _

_ Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God _

_ And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, _

_ Am not tormented with ten thousand hells _

_ In being deprived of everlasting bliss?” _

 

* * *

 

The door closes. Willas is gone.

 

Oberyn is alone.

 

The abyss opens before him, a yawning chasm, as he realises that Margaery Tyrell is correct. She is right in all ways. Her dearest brother has a tender, loving soul, and Oberyn has just torn that innocence in two with mere words. And yes. His regard is more than possession. More than fucking. More than tasting virtue for the first time for years. More than grasping within his depraved hands goodness, more than himself being incorruptible for tiny moments that turn into dust with the act of climax.

 

He is in love with Willas Tyrell.

 

* * *

 

_ Sweet boy, _

 

_ You say that you like me calling you that, and I shall still do this. You are still my sweet boy. _

 

_ Willas, all I can do is fall before you upon my knees and beg your forgiveness. I do not expect for such kindness, when all I have shown you is a contemptible disregard for your heart and feelings. I would say that I made this bet before I grew to regard you the highest of men, the most perfect of souls, but that is no excuse. _

 

_ I am what I am, and I have never apologised for my wrongs before. To you, I prostrate myself and plead for mercy. _

 

_ I am arrogant. False. I thought myself above all others. I am your Lucifer, I am your Satan. I saw paradise and over-reached, and I have fallen from my Eden, my Ganymede, my Lycidas. _

 

_ Before you I bare my soul. I admire your character, your tenderness. Your passion and desire for knowledge. How you trusted me with your secrets. How you would look at me as if I worthy. The freckles across your nose. How your eyes turn dark and hungry when you see cakes. The nervous tap of your foot within your riding boot. Your limp, which makes my chest tighten with how you suffer. The tiny curl at the back of your neck that never lies flat. Your beautiful voice. Your beautiful soul, as white and unblemished as mine is black and ashen. How dear you are to me, Willas, and yet you shall probably burn this letter without reading. But I must write, because I must. _

 

_ How I wish to take you from this place, from your bastardly family, and keep you safe and cherished. We could take a house in Siena, visit the Duomo and the Baptistery, the Basilica. Enjoy the races at the piazza. Learn Tuscan. Watch you grow. Watch your pale skin turn brown in the warm sun, your leg improve with good food and gentle exercise. They have fine horses in Italy. Perhaps our funds could purchase a handsome olive-groved villa, and we could breed them even finer? Nothing could hurt us there, sweet boy. Not even I. _

 

_ Please, my heart. _

 

_ When you left, and I stood and realised I had lost you, my heart ached. I have never felt love, Willas. My life has been one of sexual appetites, carnal lust and desire. So many have I had, so much I have done, so vile has my soul become, that I see nothing but salvation in your form. Even if you do not return, I have grown. I am a better man for knowing you. My damnation is lessened. The seventh circle beckons, yet I do not fear it. Righteous pilgrim, beloved of angels. _

 

_ You deserved the truth of it all. My wrong, my love, and my everything. _

 

_ I must end. If I do not stop, I never shall. _

 

_ Yours, because I am. _

 

* * *

 

_ Sweet boy, _

 

_ I found the name of the baker who makes the quince tartlets you so enjoy. I have asked him to deliver a half-dozen. _

 

_ If you do not wish to receive them, then I understand. _

 

_ Yours. _

 

* * *

 

_ Angel, _

 

_ I may be drinking this evening, though I have no one to share my claret with. When you drink claret your lips tint sweetly purple and you are beautiful. All angels are beautiful, even the fallen ones. You are the most beautiful of all. Not because you are handsome, but because you are you, sweet boy. _

 

_ Why do I turn to religious allegory when drunk? Guilt and sin perhaps. Or because the most lovely things are written by men who read the Bible. Damn you Milton. So soapish but the bloody book reminds me utterly of you. I am ruined for ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Doctor Faustus’. Ruined. _

 

_ I miss you. Why are you not with me? Yes, because I am nothing more than a whoremongering bastard of a man, who has the temerity to love such perfection. You should be here, tipsy and sweet, talking of Dante and Siena and how much of a wonderful time we shall have. I should be kissing you because I love you. _

 

_ Have I told you that I love you? I cannot remember and the wine makes me maudlin and affectionate in spades. _

 

_ Do you have wings, Willas Tyrell? Are they white and feathered and glow with righteous purity? Are you seraphim sent to save Lucifer from the hellish flames? Are you here to force me to repent through love? I have never believed in love. I see those who are happily wed, or partnered, and I laugh at them. Laughed. How can a man just love one person when we exist in infinite variety. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is tempting, and one merest bite drives us to devour all of the sweetness. I would devour you, I would give such loving pleasure, Willas. Perhaps if you fall just a little, and I am saved just a little, we can have perfection. Though I would not have you fall. Satan mourns for all he has lost, his Eden, his loving merciless God who is terrible and awesome in all things. I would not have you dragged from paradise and suffering, angel. I would not have you as me, broken upon the wheel and rack and mourning what should be. _

 

_ Perhaps I should recant. Find a confessor and pray for my soul. Too late, I think. Perhaps I shall be shown leniency by the God of Christ who died for our sins. _

 

_ Would you love me if I were a changed man? Would you love a sinner who repents? _

 

_ Yours, always. _

 

* * *

 

Margaery cannot bear it.

 

She has seen heartbreak before. No person can circulate in society without seeing the aftermath of affairs and love rent asunder. The delicate sighs and careful tears, however, are nothing when compared to the misery of her dear brother. Willas play-acts. He says the correct words, and dutifully attends to matters that concern him. To others, who know him casually, or care not to know him well, nothing ails. He is his usual reticent and quiet self, who does not dance, who clutches a book in his long fingers.

 

She will enter a room and he is staring into space with an overwhelming sadness stunting every emotion. Willas’ warm smiles do not remove a bleak despair from his hazel eyes. Sometimes, when no one seems to watch, he dips his head and squeezes his eyelids shut, as if to try and block whatever torment insinuates within his head.

 

The letters come. Once a day, as regularly as always, they are brought into the parlour and laid upon the writing desk. Willas flinches. He gathers the envelope and bears it away, returning minutes later with a strange passion warring upon his pale face. It takes him perhaps a quarter of an hour to settle, though he fidgets and taps his foot, seems to read the same paragraph of  _ Paradise Lost _ endlessly. The book remains with him, as if a shield or a barrier, a tome that protects him just a little, even if he seems to be flagellating himself with each word. Usually Willas reads easily, hungry for the knowledge within the pasteboard backs. The volume he holds so tightly, green morocco leather and golden lettering inscribed so elegantly, is being used as a punishment.

 

“Willas?”

 

“Yes, Margaery?” Careful, too careful. He smiles dutifully, tucks the mark between the pages.

 

“What has happened? Please, I cannot see you in such pain?”

 

He fights for a long while, swallowing convulsively and breath light. Panicking. Emotions flit like clouds; anger, embarrassment, longing, and, worst of all, so awful upon her dearest and sweetest brother, an overwhelming shame that sets his countenance wet and hollow. Of course she goes to him, strokes his cheek that seems so cold and marble-carved, puts her warm arms about him and draws his dark head to her soft shoulder. The touch seems to soothe Willas, just a little, like a petting hand upon a terrified hound.

 

“I-I have made such a fool of myself Margie, and I do not know what to do.”

 

“Talk with me, darling, and we shall solve this together.” In his upset, he has not groomed his hair into the usual sleek locks; Willas hates how he tends towards curls, more suited to Margaery than himself. Loras teases him mercilessly, and therefore the tresses are usually tightly controlled with pomade, with only a waviness hinting at something more riotous.

 

“I fell in love, and I thought he-”

 

She kisses his cheek, a promise that she is not horrified at the revelation.

 

“I thought he loved me in return. I was incorrect. Where I saw regard and tenderness, he saw fifty sovereigns won with my seduction.”

 

Margaery pauses slipping her fingers rhythmically into the pretty curls. 

 

“Did,” and this proves a difficult matter to phrase, so not to scare Willas. “Did your gentleman reveal this before or after you were intimate?”

 

“He was kind enough to inform me before I- y’know. Nothing happened, and for that I am thankful. To live with being worth gold, like some poor woman upon the streets. I just- He seemed as if-”

 

“Talk if you need. I will never judge you, Willas. I promise you that.”

 

“He seemed as if he loved me, and I cannot understand.” He shudders, and her arms tighten, and then his voice breaks and flows and he cannot seem to stop the words.

 

“I just feel so lost, because it felt so true. His words, his kindness. It was a meeting of minds, very much so, but he always spoke so highly of what a good person I am. He said that I was the best of people, I was above the rabble. And I believed him. I read the letters, and I spoke the words, and, damn me, I believed that I was a better person than I ever imagined. That maybe someone could see under the boring, bookish Willas everyone else sees, who is pitied for not being like you or Loras. I felt like I was worth something, and now I am nothing. What were those words if not to flatter and seduce? Why me, Margie? Why pick me out of all of London to bring so high and then drop from the greatest height if not to break me? And I know he is not cruel. He is selfish, and self-absorbed, and I love him. I still love him, even after all of this, even as I break my heart. Every moment I am awake I think he is there. Every moment I sleep I dream of him. The letters come, and I cannot bear to read them. Empty apologies, I expect. Why did he tell me? I do not understand.”

 

“Your gentleman,” and she does not use Oberyn’s name. It is not needed. “Is more a fool than you, Willas.”

 

“He is handsome, and successful. He has the ear of the king.”

 

“But he has not got you, has he?” She strokes his cheek, and Willas closes his eyes. He seems so very young. Perhaps, compared to Loras and herself, he is. Age is a number, and not indicative of the youth of the person inhabiting the skin. “He did not win fifty sovereigns. He, I am sure, is tearing his hair out to try and devise ways of winning you back, and damn the gold. Did you know we had a delivery of quince tarts? Oh, and some very beautiful red roses, addressed to Ganymede for some odd reason.” 

 

Margaery does not understand the nickname. She never concentrated upon her meagre lessons, never enjoyed reading classics. Her tastes run to scandalous poetry and romantic fripperies, not Ovid and Plato. Comedic Restoration comedies provide her with literary and theatrical art; far more knowing and arch than any Greek tragedy.

 

“Why do I miss him?”

 

“Willas, and I want you to answer me truthfully. Why do you think your gentleman told you of the wager?” She shall set this right. Even if Margaery once doubted Oberyn Martell, her conversation with the man set her realising the depths of his affection.

 

Willas deserves happiness.

 

That seems to stun him, a frown marring the skin between his eyebrows. Poor tender-hearted Willas. The answer seems to complicate with each breath, tangled and knotted in a mind not used to speaking of emotion. Always mild in temper and level in nature, he never could talk of how he felt, not even when falling from his hunter. Just a small ‘it hurts, oh Gods,’ and then fainting. In the aftermath Willas tried not to make a fuss or bother, gritted his teeth. He assured others that the injury was nothing, that he would be perfectly fine, and she realises, with a dipping shame, that she never asked him how he was. Margaery wrote of London, and masques. Gossip. How men wished to marry her. She ignored much of what Willas wrote, asked vapid questions where his were directed, interested, even if he had no idea of what she spoke.

 

She has been an ill sister indeed. If his happiness depends upon her words, then she shall strive to become a good sibling.

 

“I think he was ashamed,” Willas finally murmurs. “I think he looked upon his behaviour and realised his sin. Perhaps he wished to display his true self - he always says he has fallen. Perhaps,” and his words are thick and heavy and over-heated. “Perhaps he wished to confess.”

 

“Perhaps he loves you.” The clock ticks ever onwards, a flicker of hands and weights whirring in the long yew case. “I think he does. If he did not, would he have said a word about a bet? Friends admit mistakes. Even me, and I loathe being wrong, Willas! The more a person loves another, the heavier the mistake is admitted, because lies to someone we love make things so very false. When I was little, remember I broke your wooden horse? I was terrified of admitting that I wanted to play, and was too rough, but I loved you so very much that I came to you and said that it was my fault. I did not confess because I wanted to feel better, but because I loved you and you deserved to know it was me. Although I was still tempted to let Loras take the blame. He is as horrid now as he was as a child, I swear. Truth is very important when you love someone. Lies are for those you hate.”

 

“I-” Carefully he disentangles himself, the lace at her shoulder imprinted upon his cheek. For a moment Willas pauses, questioningly, wanting her to tell him what he should do. For the first time, in her busy and giddying life, Margaery feels as if someone trusts her judgement. It is a heady and surprisingly delightful feeling.

 

“Go and read your letters, dearest.”

 

Willas smiles. The expression trembles, but it reaches his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Tuscany is as wonderful as making love with Oberyn Martell. 

 

The bells of the Duomo echo through the narrow streets, echoes of Donatello and Dante. Siena at  _ Palio _ bustles, but they have rooms overlooking the Piazza del Campo. Below them the horses caper, the jockeys in the colours of the  _ contrade  _ are treated as gods.

 

“Who will win, sweet boy?” Oberyn, his shirt unbuttoned, ruffled and handsome beyond words, kisses the back of Willas’ browned neck.

 

“ _ Civetta  _ has excellent confirmation, though  _ Tartuca _ looks most powerful about the front quarter. Strong shoulders.”

 

The kisses turn to teeth, and he melts helplessly as fingers trail across ribs and down to his hips.

 

“ _ Onda _ ,” murmurs his lover, “will win. The Wave shall obliterate. The colour of heaven, the force of the sea.”

 

Oberyn is, as always, correct.  _ Onda _ triumphs. They do not notice. They are oblivious to the screaming crowds, the thudding of hooves upon dirt, the blazing heat of August in Siena. Hours later they surface, wander in post-conjugal bliss hand-in-hand through the knots of spectators.

 

“‘ You are, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.’”

 

“‘Follow me into the eternal darkness’, sweet boy, ‘into fire and into ice.’”

 

Milton does not suit Italy. They have turned Dante in their love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit**
> 
>  
> 
> _'L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle'_ : 'The love that moves the sun and other stars', taken from Dante's _Il Paradiso_ , the last volume of his _Divine Comedy_.
> 
> _'Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice'_ : Taken from Canto III of Dante's _Inferno_. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Seventh circle of hell: The Minotaur guards. In the inner circle, the sodomites roam in groups, whilst the usurers sit upon flaming sands and the blasphemers writhe in the desert._
> 
>  
> 
> _Palio_ : The ancient horse races that take place twice yearly in the Piazza del Campo (Square of Horses) in Siena. Ten horses and riders, representing one of the seventeen contrade (city wards) of Siena, race bareback. Origins dte back to the 15th century, but the first modern _palio_ took place in 1656. _Onda_ ('Wave') did indeed win in 1776. It is an occasion of pageantry and tradition, and the horses ridden by each jockey are chosen by lots - no ward has their own horse. Horses are owned by private individuals and undergo rigorous selection.
> 
>   _Siena_ : Really is as wonderful as making love to Oberyn. It is my favourite city - who needs Florence when you have Siena, or Volterra, or the other ancient Tuscan towns? It is the only city I know of where escalators are provided to take you from car parks to the centre; it is insanely hilly, and wonderful, and I want to go back to that little cafe overlooking the piazza where all the Japanese tourists came and demanded all of the tiramisu, and lose myself forever.


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

 

 

They took Jon away six days previously. Bolton seems twisted in knots, pacing, muttering viciousness to nothing in particular. He will pause, occasionally, and stare at Davos through the barred cell door. 

 

No more pretty toys for Ramsay Bolton. Only smugglers.

 

Davos is the only man here, in these dripping wet-smeared cells. His scars ache with cold, and his head pounds from hunger. Food rations have reduced, and the bread he receives, greenly flecked, is thickly stale. Sometimes he grows so thirsty that he laps the moisture from the sweating walls, for Bolton ‘forgets’ to fill the leather cup. All he sees are white eyes and the jailor’s pale, square face. Darkness. The occasional flare of a candle, or a torch, but mostly he is left alone in the dark.

 

Rats. There are many. Sometimes he shares the bread with them, just a few crumbs, just to foster some intimacy with a living being. One will come to his knee now, intelligent bead eyes bright and white whiskers twitching, before it bounds up and takes a scrap of loaf from his hand. The rats prove easily biddable, and surprisingly affectionate. Whiskers - he knows the name is weak, but Davos cannot concentrate, not when he starves and thirsts and seems abandoned in this hellish nothing - clambers determinedly into his shirt. The wet fur grows warm as the little creature sleeps, a scrawny runtish lump over his heart.

 

The day after Jon was taken he asked for Stannis,

 

“He’s gone,” Ramsay whispered. “He’s left you here with me. Told me to take care of you, smuggler.” His expression darkened as he trailed his gaze down Davos’ chest. “Never flayed the ink off a man before. Maybe I’ll have it cured and stretched over frames, put it on my parlour wall. A smuggler artwork, right before my very eyes. You wouldn’t die, smuggler, I’m too fucking good at what I do, and I do like seeing the pain linger before I am merciful. Shame it wasn’t your pretty little slut, but you’ll do. He’d break too quickly, but I sense in you quite the challenge. Bet it will take a while for you to scream.”

 

“Baratheon wouldn’t let you.”

 

“Stannis,” and Ramsay spoke almost lovingly, a tenderness caged in black and twisted sadism, “is not here.”

 

Since then Bolton has not spoken, or touched, or approached. He seems to wait for Davos to send himself into despair. Ramsay seems to loathe the waiting.

 

Davos retreats into his mind. He thinks of his sons, and Sal. Of Jon. Southwark and the inn. Death.

 

Mostly he thinks of Stannis. The image of his anger is seared upon the insides of his eyelids. Storm-blue eyes, and that narrow-lipped and sensual mouth. In him Davos sees that boy who he first met, who took his fingers; far too old before his time, and utterly driven to the point of obsession. The hardness has only grown, and shifted, into dictatorship. The man seems compassionless, squeezed into a husk by circumstance. Friendless. Does Stannis Baratheon even feel, apart from his insecurities that manifest as anger and frustration? Could a man such as him love?

 

He supposes so. If Stannis loved, it would be deep, and all consuming, and terrifying. He is not a man to show affection in public. There would be no sweet kissing, no loving touches to arms or the small of backs. Such a private man, so very controlled. He would dash himself upon the shore of passion, destroy himself, break into flotsam to be tossed by the raging seas only to be carefully, reverently, put back together with the touch of his lover. Davos, naturally warm and light and caring, finds the thought of such depths frightening and intriguing in turn.

 

Love, for him, is a respectful meeting of minds. Love is kind. Reverend Sparrow often reads from the heavy King James Bible placed reverently upon the lectern carved in the shape of an eagle, wings spread and holding the good Book; verses from Corinthians which explain the nature of love. He knows the words are idyllic, but they appeal to his generous nature. Kindness, and patience, and truth. Not just between lovers, but between all. Perhaps Stannis twists the nature of  _ amor  _ in his head because he has never truly felt such?

 

Stannis is truth. He is honesty. He is rigid adherence to rules and regulations. He is a man unafraid to undertake unpleasantries to ensure the correct outcome. He holds himself above men because he understands what the fall of society can bring. And yet, when he grew angry at Davos, when his expression sharpened, his words betrayed something more meaningful than could be imagined. Emotion. Bitter and backward-looking, somewhat wistful in moments. Betrayal, and the heartsickness that can bring to a man. The loneliness of a person who has fought for others his entire life and never taken time to give himself any sort of happiness; the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few. And so he wraps himself in a veneer of ill-controlled fury at the world, and laws, and envelops his entire being in work. He becomes his role, and not a man. A judge. A councillor. A brother to the king.

 

He is not Stannis. He is a statue painted as the man.

 

Davos understands. He understands more than could be known.

 

He runs a finger along the sleek fur of Whiskers, who burrows into the side of his neck.

 

Starving to death in a prison cell whilst being guarded by a man with a taste for torture leads him to obsess upon the very nature of the person who put him there.

 

* * *

 

“Davos?” The door clangs, metal and rust, and someone takes his hand. He knows the touch, has known it for ten years. Jon kisses his palm, presses it against his cheek, and the young man is warm. The heat of his skin burns against icy frozen flesh and it hurts in a manner that feels terrifyingly wanted. “Gods, what has he done?”

 

“M’fine, lad. M’alright. Ju’ tired.”

 

Shadows change, and the sudden flaming light sears. At least in the dark there is a gentleness in not seeing; the pain of brightness turns him senseless, blinded. He tries to sit, but his arm collapses like straw. Every effort comes to naught; even lifting his head is impossible. Whiskers chitters. The little rat does not leave him. They starve together. Once he found the creature busily bringing him crumbs from long eaten meals, and wept until he lost consciousness.

 

“I’ll kill Ramsay.” It is a given. Davos believes. Bolton will be found and executed, and Jon will place that noose without any guilt.

 

“Got bored. Wouldn’t play. Jon. M’lad. You alrigh’?”

 

“Only you,” and the man’s voice cracks, hollow like a fractured bell, “would ask if someone else ails when you starve to death.”

 

“S’it bad?”

 

“Clegane will carry you.” Evasion. Davos’ life has been one of deprivation, hardships. He has come close to the gallows, and starved with the rest of the poor. He sailed, and felt his teeth loosen with scurvy, a thousand miles from land. Ship’s doctors are merely cooks with a saw. In the Indies he once felt the lash of a whip for insubordination, the welts still striping his spine. Pirates. He saw good men shot by the Navy, or hang themselves from the bowspirit. Mentally he is tough, mentally he can survive. But this, where his body fails and saps and drives him towards the end? This is the most near death that Davos Seaworth has ever experienced, in all his life. He feels his lips split as he tries to smile, blood sluggishly coating the torn surface and salting his thick husked tongue. 

 

Big hands find him, and he is lifted with a sickening ease that sends his belly twisting and internal pride to nothingness.

 

“Fuckin’ hell, Snow. Poor cunt.”

 

“He needs a doctor.”

 

* * *

 

“My lord?”

 

Sydenham is a peacock in a wig, grey horsehair that curls and boils across his beautifully clad shoulders. Stannis trusts the man implicitly. The good doctor is not just a physician but a thinker, a great and shining mind. Sometimes he calls Sir Thomas to share a meal and they discuss breakthroughs in Europe and England, the burgeoning of the science of medicine. New chapters of his book are produced, and Baratheon reads them eagerly, correcting grammar and spelling, before relinquishing the manuscript to the owner.

 

“Yes, Sir Thomas?”

 

“Were you aware of a man in your cells?”

 

“Yes. Why?” The quill dips into the ink, then scratches upon paper.

 

“Did you order for him to be starved, my lord?”

 

The pause pools blackness over the page, the blot soaking and eating at pristine whiteness, before the sturdy quill snaps in his hand.

 

“No.”

 

“I thought that would be the case, my lord. You are, as always, utterly fair with your dealings with the criminal classes. Your ward and Clegane found the gentleman alone in the dark, no drink or meat, with only a rat for comp-”

 

“Where is he?” His fingers are spattered, dripping, and Stannis does not even pause to wipe then dry. “Is he dead?”

 

“He seems to have the constitution of an ox, my lord. I have removed him to Clegane’s room and tend him there.”

 

Stannis stares, straight through the good doctor.

 

He has been at court for three weeks. Three weeks. Twenty one days of making enquiries, of stepping about the issue of Lyanna Stark with Robert, ascertaining the nature of one Jon Snow who could be his own nephew and for whom Davos Seaworth pledged his own neck. He understands now he knows the boy; an enigmatic youth, with a fine mind and a strangely fierce heart under a sullen and pretty face. Of course he is Lyanna Stark’s son.

 

Of course Davos loves the boy.

 

The jealousy remains, and grows, with every moment he spends in the company of the King’s most beloved bastard. Robert welcomed Jon with open arms, promised a house, money, advantages. Titles. Women. Men; and he laughed as Oberyn Martell sauntered past eyeing the newest of the bastards. He sees Lyanna in the curve of a mouth, those wide grey eyes, the unruly curling dark hair that is more Baratheon black than Stark brunette. Robert shooed Stannis away, took Jon to see the portrait of the Stark woman that remains in pride of place in the royal bedchamber; that Cersei Lannister is fucked under, as her husband makes love to a ghost, a memory.

 

For that Stannis feels the faintest of empathies.

 

And yet, even as he is embraced by the King of England, the ruler of the realm, Jon speaks of Davos. No gold, or influence, or raising the young man to the aristocracy has him forget the smuggler. Lord Snow, who is now Stannis’ ward, who Robert wishes to marry Shireen when she flowers, still remains in the gaol with the man who raised him.

 

How can a man inspire such devotion? Stannis knows, refuses to admit.

 

“Take him to the guest chambers, Sydenham. Ensure he is kept comfortable and do what is necessary. He is,” and Stannis swallows, somewhere on the sea and just nineteen years old, as Davos allows his fingers to be maimed and he regrets ever allowing the smuggler to leave his side, “a good man.”

 

* * *

 

The bed is ridiculous.

 

Truly ridiculous.

 

Five people could easily slumber in the four poster, ornately carved pillars raising an embroidered canopy over his head. There are many plush cushions, and the furniture seems of an ornate quality, even if it remains that dolorous oak that could depress a man. The blankets are of finespun wool, dyed a rich blue, matching the tracery of stitching in the curtains that are swept back to the foot of the bed. For a dizzying swimmingly thrilling moment when he first awoke he thought he was in Stannis’ chambers, in the man’s bed, but it has since been explained that these are the guest quarters; far finer, indeed, than Baratheon’s simple accommodation.

 

Davos has never slept in something so comfortable, or foolish. 

 

Jon watches him quietly.

 

“What time is it?” His voice improves with each passing day.

 

“Almost midday.”

 

“You look well, lad.”

 

Jon does. Gone are faded blacks and worn shirts, crack-toed boots and a general air of elegant disapparal. The coat he wears is undoubtedly expensive, cut close to his shoulders and waist, and thick glossy ink-darkness. He still will not wear colour, still fights against tailors trying to make pretty Lord Stark something more than he wishes to be. Jon tolerates to a point, then patiently explains he shall not wear yellow silk, or heliotrope, or stockings. He points at Stannis and tells them to make his clothes as black and forbidding as any that Baratheon wears. No slippers, only boots. And so he remains, essentially, Jon Snow. Good food has softened his cheekbones, taken that gaunt and starved look, and he seems to be shifting from youth to man with a broadening of his back.

 

“You still look awful. Better, but still-”

 

They both smile.

 

He loves Jon.

 

Jon loves him. Jon is his son, whatever the nobility of his bloodline, the heights to which he has been raised. The kisses that pass between them lack the passion inspired by death, are placed upon foreheads and cheeks rather than wanting mouths.

 

The kiss is fondly remembered by them both. There is no shame between them, even now.

 

“When can I get out of this bloody bed, lad? I’m wasting here, when I could be busy. You know I cannot abide being lazy - surely I can mend something about the house? I saw some panelling that needs fixing, and that desk could do with tending. Woodworm, Jon, could take the flooring if it catches.”

 

“Sydenham says today, if you feel well enough.”

 

Jon helps him dress, frowning at ribs and bones, in finer clothes than he has ever worn. The comforting solidity that is Davos still seems diminished, though less corpse-like and frightening than a fortnight before. He runs lithe now, and his shoulders make him awkward, but Stannis Baratheon descends thrice daily and watches, eagled eyed and dour, to see every morsel upon a heavily loaded trencher plate pass the smuggler’s lips.

 

“Stannis awaits, if you can bear him.” The young man grins, amused. It is indeed odd how easily he and his uncle have grown to an accord. They both run to the grave and possibly sullen, and place honour above all things, the outcome above the now. They talk into the night of laws, and governance, and how to rule. They spark, and argue with intensity; Stannis even smiles, and is handsome in a heartbeat, and Davos feels his own pulse thrum helplessly.

 

It is as if this brother is Jon’s father, rather than the King. Their tastes and temperaments complement so very well.

 

“Always Stannis, always there.”

 

“He likes you, Davos, he respects you” The teasing sends his head rushing, and he smacks Jon lightly upon the back of the arm. “Well, he does. He never is silent about your many good points, even if he will insist on calling you ‘that smuggler.’ He told me about your hand, what he did. He called you the bravest and most loyal of all the realm’s servants, and that he should have kept you to himself rather than let you disappear. He seems to really regret that, by the way.”

 

“But then I’d never have found you, Jonny, would I?” He pulls the young man to him, arms about his waist, kissing the pale forehead fondly. “Where would I have been without my lad, eh? Daft bugger, Jon, that you always have been. Even if you are all dressed up like some lordling, and have a title, and a thousand young women desperate to wed you, you’ll always be my lad. Even if you remain daft for all time.”

 

“I know you said you’d hang for me.”

 

His arms tighten, cradling Jon against him, a hand finding the boy’s hair. “It’s what a Dad does for his son.”

 

“I’m not really-”

 

“Yes. Yes you are, Jon. Always have been my son, always will be, no matter who your mother and father are.” Davos’ voice is quiet and low, and completely steady. “The moment you turned up on my doorstep, you were my boy. I love you just as much as Devan, and Matty, and the others. Family isn’t always blood, eh? Family is what you make it, and you are my family, Jon, and you are always my son. I would die for you with my heart happy because I’d know you’re safe.”

 

“You’re a good man.”

 

“A soft bastard, that’s what I am.”

 

* * *

 

Jon stumbles to bed at one in the morning, bleary and not a little drunk on the port wine he finds so appealing.

 

“He looks happy.” The smuggler plays the stem of his wine glass between his hands, those scars rubbing at the intricately twisted stem. “Thank you.”

 

“He is an intelligent young man, and of far higher ability than Robert’s usual passel of brats. Of course I do not imagine he wishes to marry Shireen, given his proclivities, but it would be advantageous to both parties. She is a very sensible young girl, and understands the needs of family.” The kiss still taunts Stannis, still tempts him to sinning and pleasure and those memories of blood and the sea. Davos’ hips, the flex of his back. The masterful way he took control of the situation. 

 

“Proclivities?”

 

“With men.”

 

“Oh. That kiss, right?” A greying eyebrow quirks. 

 

“Are you the sort of man who does kiss the boys that you bring up?” The tone runs acid, and angry, even if Stannis tries to lessen the bite. 

 

“No, I don’t.” Davos smiles, but it is darker than usual, more emotional. “I thought he was going to die, Stannis. I thought my Jon was going to die on the King’s road like a dog, shot in the head.”

 

“So you kissed him.” All wrong, this seems so very different to how it should be, how he forced into his mind. His words echo bitterness, spite, where they should be questioning. Before this, Stannis planned how this would go; they would talk, quietly, understandingly. Davos would say that his passions lay elsewhere, teased by searching words from his cheerful lips. An accord would be struck, they would-

 

“So what if I did?” He shifts in his seat, drains the glass, places the goblet upon the hearth.

 

“It is illegal.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Wrong. Sinful. Filthy.”

 

“If you say so.”

 

He cannot rip his gaze from Davos. He cannot drag himself from those mild brown eyes, or the silvered beard. Ink flows where his shirt is unbuttoned along his throat, a dip of collarbones heavy in the candlelight. The tattoos are dots and lines, like scrimshaw, from men in countries that have not even been named, let alone mapped. Blue, like the woad of the ancient Celts, swirling about pectorals and nipples. Everything seems thick and soupish, swimming in a current. Sixteen years previously he mutilated this fine, honorable man, and Davos does not blame him for the missing fingertips. He held his hand steady, and did not cry out, and Stannis bound the wounds himself with his own handkerchief torn to strips. He hurt this man because the law had to be followed, and yet?

 

“You are a good man, smuggler.”

 

“You are, too. Underneath everything, even if you are a hard, cold bastard. You’ve always been fair, I always thought you a decent person.”

 

Affirmation and admiration from the lips of Davos Seaworth mean more than can be explained. Stannis is across the gap between them, kneeling before the man, seizing his hand and examining the wounds that are now shining and slick scar tissue. For a moment he wonders if they still ache, if they are as sensitive as the flesh which they replaced. For a moment the room wheels and the fire seems overly-hot, before, helpless now, as he finally touches Davos Seaworth’s traumatised skin. He rubs the existent tips of each finger across his lips. Not a kiss, not as courtly or trite as that; more a caress of skin, an investigation of senses. Ridges, and flat expanses, and strange without the textured pads.

 

“You should never have left, Seaworth.”

 

“You needed to do as you did.”

 

“You  _ left _ me, Davos.”

 

A kiss to the forehead, as sweet and loving as he gives to Jon Snow, though Davos’ lips linger, his breathing warm and grape-sweetened and intoxicating. They are both drunk. Without the wine, this could never happen. Stannis knows this. Without the claret, the port, the heavy sack at dinner, he would be in his chair and never touching this splendid man’s hand.

 

“I am sorry.”

 

“I needed you, and you left me. You should have been with me. I was all alone, I needed a right-hand to stand beside me, smuggler.”

 

“Shhh,” Davos’ voice is soft and low, achingly soothing. “You’re not alone now, love.” The pet name arcs between them, a testing of circumstance and boundaries, the true essence of London. Stannis accepts it with a scrabble within his head of claws and relief and something bursting, bright and clean and freshly-new. “None of us are alone any more. You got me, and you got Jon, and your Shireen, and we’ve got you, like a proper family, and I’m sorry I left. I should not have left you, I was wrong to do that. I saw you, all determined and strong, and iron-willed, like you could rule the world, and I just was in awe. I thought there was no room for a smuggler. You always were so bloody hard to read. Always angry at the world. I didn’t think that you needed me.”

 

“Never leave me.” An order, without petulance. The demand of a leader of men.

 

“I promise.”

 

It is inevitable, and wrenching, and hands slide and tongues wrestle and afterwards Stannis rests his head upon Davos’ thigh and stares into the flames as those wrecked fingers comb through his hair with loving reverence. Their covenant, their promise; sealed with sweetest of kisses.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Historical Bit**
> 
> No historical bit today, just a big thank you for reading. I know I can go down the rabbit hole with these most of the time, so I appreciate everyone who reads my historical AUs, my more comedic stuff - actually, everyone who ever reads anything of mine ever? Big matey slap on the shoulder and the offer to share my port wine.
> 
> Next up, we have something lighter and far more _Star Wars_ based. Why have two ships when I can have a cast of thousands? OTP? OTP47 more like. I think I've realised I prefer playing with absolutely everyone. The possibilities!
> 
> Seriously though, thank you. Much appreciated indeed.


End file.
